As God prepared His people to enter the Promised Land, He told them of the blessings that awaited them there:
Deuteronomy 6:10-13
(10) And it shall be, when the LORD thy God shall have brought thee into the land which he sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give thee great and goodly cities, which thou buildedst not,
(11) And houses full of all good things, which thou filledst not, and wells digged, which thou diggedst not, vineyards and olive trees, which thou plantedst not; when thou shalt have eaten and be full;
(12) Then beware lest thou forget the LORD, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.
On either side of this passage were admonitions to keep God’s Word in their hearts and to remember the God Whom they served.
God understands our hearts. He knows our nature. Being made in His image, we are at our core spiritual beings but we occupy physical bodies in a physical world. God is pleased to provide for our needs and being the generous God that He is, He often provides far more than we could ask or think (Ephesians 3:20). But being the spiritual beings housed in physical bodies that we are, we can allow our physical blessings to distract us from our relationship to a holy God. We can become spoiled and take God’s blessings for granted. We can go from that attitude to the attitude that we deserve the blessings that we have. From there, we can begin to idolize the blessings and forget the God Who gave them to us.
So, God has to constantly remind us to keep His word as “a sign upon [our] hand” and to make His truth “as frontlets between [our] eyes (Deuteronomy 6:8). Because we are forgetful creatures, easily distracted by the blessings we receive. Some of those blessings include the talents and abilities God gives us. Like the houses and lands that God gave the people of Israel, our talents and abilities are not things we made by our hands. They are gifts God has given us, and the things that we earn or make or acquire as a result of our talents and abilities ultimately belong to God and not to us.
So, what is our responsibility when it comes to our blessings?
“Thou shalt fear the LORD thy God, and serve him, and shalt swear by his name” (Deuteronomy 6:13).
No gift God gives us is intended solely for us to consume upon ourselves. Every gift God gives us is meant for us to glorify Him and to be a blessing to others. The greater our gifts, the greater our responsibility before God.
[Photo by Glenn Haertlein on Unsplash]
Grace in Waves 