October 13 - Trust and Obey
October 13
Trust and Obey
Bible Reading: Psalms 78:1-7
1Give ear, O my people, to my law; Incline your ears to the words of My mouth. 2I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings of old, 3which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us. 4We will not hide them from their children, telling to the generation to come the praises of the Lord, and His strength and His wonderful works that He has done. 5For He established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which He commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children; 6That the generation to come might know them, the children who would be born, that they may arise and declare them to their children, 7that each generation may set its hope anew on God, remembering His glorious miracles and obeying His commands;
HAVE YOU EVER entered your family's living room and plopped down on the couch? Sure you have, right? But how did you know the couch would hold you?
Have you ever slapped a stamp on a letter or card and mailed it to someone who lived hundreds of miles away? Of course, you have. But what made you think the letter would actually reach its destination?
Have you ever picked up a telephone, dialed a friend's number, and expected someone at your friend's house to answer the phone? Well, why did you expect to be connected to the phone at your friend's house?
"Don't be dumb," you might say. "I knew the couch would hold me because I've sat on it lots of times before. And I figured the letter would go where I mailed it because I've mailed things before. And I've dialed the same phone number lots of times. Why wouldn't it ring at my friend's house, unless they changed their phone number?"
You're absolutely right. You do the same kind of thing every day. You expect the couch to support you because you've sat on it many times, and it's never collapsed, right? The same is true of the letter and the phone call; you expect a certain thing to happen because it's always happened that way before, right? You might say you've learned to trust those things, right?
Well, if you can trust a couch because it's never let you down, you should really be able to trust God. A couch might get old; it might fall apart. But God never gets old. He never breaks down. He never fails. He is always trustworthy.
And if you can trust God, you can also trust His commands. You can believe that when God says to do something (or not to do something), His command is good because He is good. When God says, "Honor your mother and your father," you can believe that it won't hurt you to honor your mother and your father. When He says, "Do not lie," you can believe that telling the truth is going to help you, not hurt you.
You don't ever have to wonder if this command or that command is worth obeying; you don't ever have to guess which of God's commands is good for you. If you can trust God (and you can), you can also trust His commands.
REFLECT: Unscramble the following words from today's Bible reading and rewrite them on the blanks to list four reasons why we can trust God.
sonless _____________from the past
urigsloo the ____________ deeds of the Lord
erowp His ________________
carmiles the mighty ______________ He did
Answers: lessons; glorious; power; miracles.
PRAY: "Lord, I know I can trust Your commands because I know I can trust You. Help me to remember Your glorious miracles and obey Your commands every day."