Day Fifteen: Listen!

I am going to handle today's passage a little differently.  Instead of working through the Read, Think, Pray, Live sections of the devotional.  I am merely going to type out the reading for today.  I have a few insights, based on what I've been living through this past year, but I don't think those need to be the focus today.  The reading speaks for itself; since it's the Bible, it usually does.  But, I want to share just this passage today because it cuts right to my core. 

Numbers 6:1-9

(1-2) This is the commandment, the rules and regulations, that God, your God commanded me to teach you to live out in the land you're about to cross into to possess.  This is so that you'll live in deep reverence before God lifelong, observing all his rules and regulations that I'm commanding you, you and your children and your grandchildren, living good long lives.

(3) Listen obediently, Israel.  Do what you're told so that you'll have a good life, a life of abundance and bounty, just as God promised, in a land abounding in milk and honey.

(4) Attention, Israel!  God, our God!  God the one and only!

(5)  Love God, your God, with your whole heart: love him with all that's in you, love him with all you've got!

(6-9) Write these commandments that I've given you today on your hearts.  Get them inside of you and then get them inside your children.  Talk about them wherever you are, sitting at home or walking in the street; talk about them from the time you get up in the morning to when you fall into bed at night.  Tie them on your hands and foreheads as a reminder; inscribe them on the doorposts of your homes and on your city gates.

Abba Father, I don't know into what land you are about to guide my family, but I pray that you help us to remember that you are the one leading us there, preparing us for that land, and I pray that you would always be before us and that we would never forget that you are the one guiding us.  I pray that we would not forget the lessons we are being taught in the midst of our current storm.  I pray that we would not falter in disbelief the next time troubles hit our lives because we remember that you have brought us through this one and through every other trial in our lives, and that we have become stronger and better able to serve you because of them.  Help us to always live in deep reverence before you, never forgetting that all we have is a gift from you and not of our own hands.  Thank you for your mercy that has spared us what we deserve and thank you for your grace that has granted us what we do not deserve.

In Jesus' Holy and Precious Name, I pray, Amen.