Day 3 – Learn, Lean, Love

From Deuteronomy 28 – The blessing of God, through obedience
can be upon everything I put my hand to. This presupposes that I am putting my
hand to those things that are in accordance with God’s purposes since I am
obeying Him. It is the same principle at work as in Psalm 37:4. If I delight
myself in the Lord, the Lord can trust me enough to give me the desires of my
heart because He is shaping those desires.

Lord, shape my desires as I learn, from You,
to lean upon You and to love You.

As You shape my desires, may I
become productive for Your purposes.

Learn- Matthew 28:29-30 outlines the process of learning.
First, we must come and it is a rag-tag group He calls to do so, worn out and
beaten down by life, old dogs who have given up learning new tricks. We are
promised fulfillment (rest). The second step in the process is to submit to a
yoke which binds us to Him and to our yoke-fellows. Then we begin to learn, but
our learning is from Jesus. What we learn is that He is no stern schoolmaster,
but one who is gentle, humble, and generous in giving rest.

Lean – Proverbs 3:5-6 teaches me/us to lean by instructing
us what not to lean upon, namely, our own understanding. It is not that
understanding is frowned upon; it is that our human understanding is so limited
as to exclude vast storehouses of information and interpretation. Yet, it is so
compelling and simplistic that we are eager to settle for it only to discover
later that the missing piece was the puzzle component that brought the whole
picture into cohesion and that it was in His hand.

Love – They asked Jesus in Matthew 22:34-40 what was most
important in the law and He answered from two Old Testament scriptures. The
first was a specific answer to their specific question: Love God. Then He went
further to illustrate the importance of loving other people. Finally, He
reduced the rationale for all law and instruction to these two: Love God and
others and you will keep all the rest of the laws.

As I seek God’s will in my life and ministry and in the life
of the church I lead, I come to understand that decisions must be based upon
what God Himself teaches, my faith in the reliability of His Word and
applications that are filtered through the law of love.

Day 4 – Understand

Deuteronomy 28 reminds me that to walk in God’s ways and to
carefully follow those ways, even given the lessons of yesterday, presume
understanding that may often be beyond me. I need to understand some things
that I do not yet understand.

Therefore, the prayer of David in Psalm 119:25 is one which
I can apply. I need discernment and the request for discernment is legitimized
in the scriptures.

God, teach me and open my eyes to be like those wise men who were called upon by the king because of their ability to
understand the times and know what needed to be done.