“If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully keep all His commands that I am giving you today, the Lord your God will set you high above the nations of the world.  You will experience these blessings if you obey the Lord your God:  Deuteronomy 28:1-2

“But if you refuse to listen to the Lord your God and do not obey all the commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come and overwhelm you:  Deuteronomy 28:15

We always have a choice to make.  Here the Israelites are being given a choice.  Remember they are making a 14 day journey but it is taking them 40 years due to their repeated disobedience.  They keep messing up.  Sounds a lot like my own life story.  I spent many years living under what seemed like a curse.  I was on an emotional roller coaster with the highest of highs and the lowest of lows.  When things were good, I was on top of the world, but when things were low I was crashing.  Sometimes I felt blessed and sometimes I felt cursed.

This scripture passage is just an excerpt from a wonderful chapter in Deuteronomy.  Chapter 28 of Deuteronomy spends the first 14 verses talking about the ways in which God will bless them if they are obedient.  Verses 15-68 give details about the curses they will endure if they are disobedient.

We have spent this week talking about being obedient to God.  We are taught as children that there are things we should do and things we should not do.  We should look both ways before crossing the street, we should not stick our hand on a hot stove, we are taught that we have choices to make.  If you choose to dart into the street without looking to see if a car is coming you could get hit.  If you choose to press your hand on a hot stove, you are going to get burned.  We also have choices to make when it comes to our relationship with God.  We can choose to accept Christ as our savior or reject Him altogether.  We can choose to have a close relationship with Him or refuse to give up our sinful lives.  We can choose to obey him or choose to live in disobedience.  We can choose to be blessed or choose to be cursed.

I was raised in church, I knew right from wrong.  I wanted a relationship with God but I didn’t want to give up the sin that was in my life.  I wanted to have my cake and eat it too.  I mean after all if you have cake, you should eat it right?  Well the problem is that cake is a lot like sin.  It gives you this wonderful taste and it tastes so good while you are indulging in it.  it gives you that sugar high but then you crash and if you are like me then you step on the scale and it has added a few pounds.  The long term effects are often not worth those 1-2 minutes I may spend eating a big piece of cake. When we sin, it always seems like a great idea at the time.  But the after effects are not good.  You see more than anything, God wants to bless us.  He wants us to live a good life.  But he will not force us to do things His way.  He lets us decide.  If we choose sin, then we suffer the consequences.

There was a time in my life when I chose to step away from God.  I stepped away from Him.  The Bible very clearly tells us that He will never leave us nor forsake us, but I had stepped away from Him.  When I had stepped away I knew that he was just a prayer away but I was enjoying the sin in my life.  After a while it wasn’t much fun anymore.  My bad choices were beginning to weigh heavily on me.  I was beginning to feel the pain of a life without Christ.  But God had a plan for my life, he actually used my mess and made it my message.  He helped me to get my life cleaned up and start living for Him.  Wow! What a difference that made.  Now, don’t get me wrong, its not that I have no problems in my life since I got closer to God, its just that I handle them so much differently.  You see I know that as long as I obey God that He will take care of me.  I know that when I face a huge problem, He will have my back.  I know that He has everything under control and I have no reason to worry or fear.  That is a wonderful feeling my friend.  When huge problems come at you and you know that you serve a God that is going to work this out for your good, it just doesn’t get any better than that.

So today and every day we have a choice to make.  We can choose to stay close to God and obey His commands to the best of our ability.  Now we all know that we are not perfect, but we do the best we can.  Or, we can choose to be disobedient and suffer the consequences.  Of  course the biggest choice we face is where we want to spend eternity, heaven or hell?  So I encourage you to make the right choice.  Choose a life of obedience to God.  You won’t be sorry you did.  I promise!

Have a great day!