Deuteronomy 30 -- What's So Hard About Making This Decision??

Moses cut right to the chase.  My commentary summed it up:  “We’re created in God’s image and He gave us minds to think with, hearts to feel with, and a will to decide with, and God calls us to make right decisions.”  God has also given us His Word, readily available to us.  Yet Moses starts, “When all these blessings and curses I have described happen to you …”  They aren’t even in the Promised Land yet, but God has already shown Moses the future.  They are going to choose curses and death instead of blessings and life!  After 40 years wandering in the desert with them, you’d think that after having this revealed to him by God, Moses would simply walk away and say, “I give up!”  But God didn’t stop with that particular revelation, and what He said caused Moses to not lose hope:  “Then you and your children will return to the Lord your God, and you will obey Him with your whole being in everything I am commanding you today.  Then the Lord your God will give you back your freedom.  He will feel sorry for you … the Lord your God will prepare you and your descendants to love Him with your whole being so that you will live.”

Moses asks, “What’s so hard about making the correct decision?”  After all, it’s life or death, blessings or curses!  Why would anyone choose death and curses?  Because their hearts are far from God and they don’t trust Him.  Satan has put blinders on them and they’ve bought the lie.  And they just can’t believe that what they’re having to give up is going to be worth whatever they will someday receive because they did.  I understand that.  It comes from the old saying, “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”It’s operating not by faith but by sight.  It’s a sin that’s so besetting that we cannot imagine how we could survive without it … much like an addiction, and it has overridden our intellectual processing that would tell us otherwise.  It all harkens back to 29:4 – “To this day the Lord has not given you a mind that understands; you don’t really understand what you see with your eyes or hear with your ears.  I led you through the desert for 40 years, and during that time neither your clothes nor sandals wore out.  You ate no bread and drank no wine or beer.  This was so you would understand that I am the Lord your God.”

In our own lives, God is describing how, ever when we were away from Him, He loved us and prepared our minds and hearts, despite ourselves, to be able one day to recognize His fingerprints all over every area of our lives – to know that despite our sinfulness, He loves us and He kept loving us until we came back to Him.

Father, thank You for not giving up on me, despite my sinfulness!  Looking back, it’s hard to believe how far I drifted and that You pursued me anyway!  Such love!

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford