Deuteronomy 6:5 –
And you must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength.
This chapter is a call for whole hearted commitment to God. If you think about what God is asking in this verse it sounds simple and may be easy for a season. But think about Israel, they saw the Lord part the Red Sea and do amazing things to guide them from Egypt and how they drift. How are we to love God when our interaction can easily be explained away as coincidence? It’s easy to love your children with all your heart and soul because they are part of you, but someone or something that is not real to many is difficult to give yourself away to.
Believe me I struggle with this daily; when things are rosy it’s easy to praise God. But when the bills are mounting, the business closed, cost of living is going up, wages are frozen, family pressures rise and life consumes the day, love for an unseen entity is difficult. Especially when you know a bunch of this could be wiped away with one blessing. Of course you then remember homes or land that sold out of the blue which wiped many of those pressures away only to step right back into the behavior that caused the initial stress. So while I may grovel in self-pity right now, God is letting me really learn a lesson.
The key here is not to worry about a season of doubt or a period where all your heart may not be into God. The key is to remain steadfast in your pursuit of God’s love. In the 3+ years I have being doing this “project” my heart is all over the board, sometimes filled and sometimes hardened. The key is never stop the pursuit of the Lord. Always focus on His love and understand it may not flow the way we want it to each and every day. And when you are in a “dark” time always remember He is with you and loves you like His own child. Sometimes His love can be defined as “tough love” and others it is flowing but it is ALWAYS there for us.
Now look at verses 7-9, interestingly they talk about the commandments in our homes but also outside. Presently our nation is in a battle for the Ten Commandments to be in public places. Interestingly these verses do not say ensure the government posts them, it limits them to your “domain”. As you read the “Law” you quickly see how closely our system of laws and courts closely model the Hebraic Law so although the Ten Commandments are not allowed on the court house steps they laws we live under have a fundamental sharing of the Law.