Tuesday, December 19, 2017

Joshua 23:10-11 -- On Love and Participation

"One man of you shall chase a thousand: for the Lord your God, he it is that fighteth for you, as he hath promised you.
Take good heed therefore unto yourselves, that ye love the Lord your God."
Joshua 23:10-11


On the surface this sounds almost like a threat, but of course it's actually a good reminder and warning to take heed, not because God will abandon us, but because we will abandon him.  It's like a radio station in a way.  God is *always* broadcasting, trying to contact us, and help us.  But we have to be willing to receive, and too often we fuzz him out, falling out of tune with the spirit and losing the signal entirely.  God is still there, and he still loves us, but we can't hear him or always feel that because we stop listening, and when we stop showing our love to him by tuning him out, we also can't take advantage of his blessings in our lives.

Sometimes we think that the fact that blessings are conditional makes God a bad guy, or that it means that he doesn't love us.  But blessings are set up as conditional for a reason... so they can help us be motivated to be better.  Just like a driver's license, or a license to practice medicine or law.  Those are blessings that require effort... not just to get them in the first place, but also to maintain them.  If we stop doing things the right way, then our licenses can be revoked.  They aren't revoked because someone hates us; they are revoked because we broke the rules, and we are endangering others or not meeting the minimum standard required in order to help them.  Blessings are similar.  They are based on laws, and obedience to the law grants blessings (D&C 130:20-21).  This verse is just explaining that the reverse is also true: disobedience revokes blessings.

God loves us and is willing to fight our battles.  He wants to have a relationship with us, and he wants us to have all the good blessings in our lives and for us to be happy.  He knew though, when he set up the world that we needed some structure and some rules so that we would work at getting better and not just blow everything off... or up.  So he set it up in a way where we had to keep doing the things that would eventually make us happy so that we could get blessings, and if we stayed on that track, it would lead to salvation.  And if we don't, we get some pretty immediate feedback that we are wandering off track, since we can't seem to tune into God anymore, and things that seemed easy seem hard all of a sudden. 

Today, let's remember our role in God's plan.  Let's not imagine that God will save us without our participation. :)

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