God Speaking

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them upon your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.”

(Deuteronomy 6: 5 – 7)

Our youngest granddaughter who is 11 months old, has begun crawling and last Sunday she and her family were at our house for dinner. As soon as she was put down on the floor I rushed to protect, what I thought, would be objects she might damage or might damage her. My son-in-law, stopped me by saying.

We want her to learn what “no” means.  

Of course, all we adults were watching her to protect her from harm, but when her father said, “NO” in a firm voice as she went to towards our gas fire place (off at the time) I was surprised to see her look at him differently, stop for a minute until he picked her up and turned her around. He wanted her to learn that when he said no, it was important to stop and listen to him.

Later I was thinking about this and thought that that was exactly what our Heavenly Father was doing when he gave us the Ten Commandments, he was basically teaching us what “NO” meant to protect us from the ravages that not listening to him can bring about. Often, we have the mistaken idea that the Heavenly Father gave us the law to make life difficult or to spoil our fun somehow, not realising the incredible love for us that prompted him to write these laws for our own protection. His love is not one of indifference, but one of deep caring. He designed us, he knows how we can so easily go on our own way which often leads to great heartache for us. He knew we needed protection.

When Moses was preparing the children of Israel to go into the promised land, he impressed upon them the importance of listening to the Lord’s voice so they then would live life the way God had intended it was to be lived, under his guidance.

“Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him.” (Deuteronomy 30: 19 – 20)

Later, the prophet, Isaiah, also reminded the people and of course us as well the importance of listening to God’s voice, especially when we are about to choose a course of action.

“Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, “This is the way; walk in it.” (Isaiah 30: 21)

Even as adults we need to be like children and stop and listen to the voice of caution and stay covered by the loving protection of our Heavenly Father.