I Hope You Come to Your Senses

I’m almost done with Deuteronomy. God has just made a covenant with his

people in order to bless them. They were slaves in Egypt for 430 years, and they

only know slavery. They don’t know how to treat each other with kindness and

dignity, and they don’t know the God who save them from the hand of Pharoah.

So, God tells them what He expects. He gives them the Law. And this is the part

we tend to bristle at, because ‘we are Americans: and no one can tell us what to

do!’ or some variation of that. But if we had lived in their shoes, we would have

seen that God was for us! For our dignity! We don’t have to bow before Pharoah

and his wickedness, we bow before no one! Except the One True God. He is the

Only One worthy of our reverence. So along with that, He tells them to take one

day off each week to rest and spend time with Him. Again, this would have

sounded like freedom to them! Slaves don’t get a day off.

So, God says in Deuteronomy 26:16-18 “The Lord your God is commanding you

this day to follow these statutes and ordinances. Follow them carefully with all

your heart and all your soul. Today you have affirmed that the Lord is your God

and that you will walk in His ways, keep his statutes, commands, and ordinances

and obey him. and today the Lord has affirmed that you are his own possession

as he promised you, that you are to keep all his commands, that he will elevate

you to praise, fame, and glory above all the nations he has made, and that you

will be a holy people to the Lord as he promised.’ Do you see God’s heart? He

loves you and wants to honor you, but the only way there is to get to know him,

to love him, and to honor him too.

Why do we resist that so much? I know I did. When I walked away from God

because my husband who I trusted let me down, that was like blaming God for

what happened! My problem is that I didn’t really know Him. I blamed Him for

letting me down, but really, He didn’t. and so, I wandered. For quite a while, and

it wasn’t until He opened my eyes, and I started reading my Bible that I had my

‘paradigm shift’! I was looking at life completely in the wrong way! So that is

what I noticed in Deuteronomy. God has spelled out his blessing and curses in

this book in a lot of detail! You might say, curses? Why curses? Why doesn’t God

just ‘live and let live?’ Because He can’t. Sin must be atoned for. He is God, we

are His creation, and He makes the rules. But if you’ve ever been sinned against,

you will find that comforting. And if you’re the one sinning against someone else,

I hope you come to your senses, because He is standing at the door waiting to

forgive and restore you.

God wants you to prosper, to be blessed, to be a blessing to others, to be the

head and not the tail! The problem is, we tend to get arrogant when things are

good. And forget God. I have done that so many times. But something is different

now. My appreciation and gratitude for God is greater than it has ever been in

my life, because of the greatness of my sin that He has forgiven and covered! And

I don’t want to forget Him again, so I am careful to keep the word of God in my

mind and in my heart.

But this is what He says about the person who is determined to go their own way

without Him: He will send against that person curses, confusion and rebuke in

everything you do ‘until you are destroyed and quickly perish, because of the

wickedness of your actions in abandoning me.’ The Lord will make pestilence cling

to you: He will afflict you with wasting disease, fever, inflammation, burning heat,

blight, mildew, drought. He will afflict you with boils, madness, blindness, and

mental confusion. You will not be successful in anything you do. (from Deut 28).

I recognize some of these from my own life when I was in my season of

wandering. Mental confusion, for example: once my daughter said to me on the

phone: ‘Mom, you’re not making any sense!” (God used that comment later

though, because it stuck with me.) And my husband would say the same thing

about his season of wandering! He was sick all the time. (And now that He has

returned to the Lord, he is even so much healthier physically!) Is everything going

wrong in your life? I think it’s no understatement to say that people are walking

around today with lots of mental confusion among other things! Perhaps we

should take an honest inventory of our lives: and ask God to show us what He

wants us to change. The fact that God is trying to get our attention is a gift! He

wants good for us! We cannot even come close to planning the good for ourselves

that God wants to give us! And when I started to truly believe this my life began

to change!

But here’s the best part. Any time you find yourself headed in the wrong

direction, justifying your sin, deliberately avoiding people who are walking with

God, and just abandoning God, it’s still not too late! As long as you are reading

this, repentance and restoration is still an option. God promises that if you find

yourself in a lonely place of exile because of your sin, you can still ‘come to your

senses’ and return to the Lord your God! And guess what: ‘He will restore your

fortunes, have compassion on you, and gather you again from all the peoples

where the Lord you God has scattered you. Even if your exiles are at the farthest

horizon, he will gather you and bring you back from there.’ (Deut 30:3,4). No

matter what you’ve done, no matter what I’ve done, we can return to the Lord

and once again be restored and filled with joy in His presence, looking forward to

forever with Him and each other. Don’t listen to our Enemy who whispers in your

ear: ‘its too late for you’. He did that to me too, but it was a lie. Open your Bible

and fall in love with God. I hope you come to your senses.