Understand, therefore, that the Lord your God is indeed God. He is the faithful God who keeps his covenant for a thousand generations and lavishes his unfailing love on those who love him and obey his commands. (Deuteronomy 7-9 NLT) Obedience comes at a price, but it also carries a huge blessing. No one can say obedience doesn't 'cost' them something. It usually means we lay down something and take up something else in its place. If we think obeying God's decrees is going to be easy-peasy just because we said yes to Jesus, we might want to rethink that one! Obedience might cost us some of our relationships. What? Yup, it could mean we pull away from some that aren't helping us be built up in the Lord and are actually pulling us away time and time again. Didn't Jesus say we were to love the sinner? Yup, but he never said we needed to allow them to continue to be influential in our lives! Obedience might cost us time and energy. When we follow Jesus closely, we ...
They traded the truth about God for a lie. So they worshiped and served the things God created instead of the Creator himself, who is worthy of eternal praise! Amen. That is why God abandoned them to their shameful desires. (Romans 1:25-26 NLT) They traded the truth about God for a lie. That really paints a bleak picture, doesn't it? Down through the generations, everywhere we go, we would have found those whose hearts remained steadfast in their worship of the one true God. They might even be referred to as a 'remnant' of faithful believers. Even in the face of those who follow more 'popular trends' or 'cultural norms', they remained true to the teachings of scripture and their worship of the King of Kings. They wouldn't be swept along into the cultural norms. If we didn't have their examples and their faithfulness, where would we be today? The 'remnant' has always been the ones to bring a nation back to God. Scripture records account after ...