When I think about what it means to be loyal and faithful to someone, I often picture a dedication that really doesn’t make sense. True loyalty overpowers that individual’s own personal agenda. It is true selflessness. So with the idea of faithfulness and loyalty we can’t forget how much God displayed this when dealing with the children of Israel. That way that God was with them is the same way God is with every believer. We are all His children and because we are He promised to be faithful to us. Now in other agreements or relationships there are terms and conditions. There are rules we must abide by in order to receive the benefits of being in relationship with a person. For example, although the love we receive from our parents is unconditional, there are still things required from us as their children. First and foremost, we must obey our parents. They offer us guidance and support when we so dearly need it. So when we heed our parent’s voice, it pays off. We are rewarded handsomely with all that great kid stuff we want and at the time we feel we need. So to be in relationship with our Heavenly Father works the same way. Heed the voice of the Holy Spirit when He is trying to offer guidance and we will reap all the benefits, and see just how faithful He really is.
Now going back to children of Israel, when God dealt with them He laid down the rules that they had to abide by to remain in relationship with Him. To take a look at some of those rules we can find it in Deuteronomy 6:5-25.
Verse five states that we should love the Lord with all of our heart, mind, and soul. This is the ultimate commandment, because if you love God with all of your heart soul and might you will want to follow all of the other commandments. You will do whatever it you can to be in right relationship with the father. Now as you can see from the text, God promised the children of Israel many things. Most importantly, He promised them land...a home for a people that were bound by slavery in Egypt for hundreds of years. He told them that they would gain all of these things that He promised without having to toil for them. He said that all of the good things that we could ever want would be given to us if only we stay in proper relationship with Him.
What Was Required of the Children of Israel?
All God required of the children of Israel was their love and dedication. God wanted them to love Him and never forget Him. He wants our loyalty. He wants us to be faithful to Him. The simplest way to understand a relationship with God is to realize that the same things we require from our earthly relationships are required by our spiritual relationship. Just as we have to spend time talking, sharing, laughing, and just enjoying the company of our loved ones, we as believers should have time set aside to spend with God. We should enjoy spending time in the presence of God. There is nothing like being in the presence of God. Psalms 16:11 says you make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
We must understand how important a relationship with God is. I mean really, we could stay in his presence and in proper relationship just to gain the benefits of that relationship with God, but it’s so much more fulfilling to do so because we love Him. To love someone means to be concerned with the things that concern them. So to love God is to be concerned with the things of God and concerned with pleasing Him.
I feel the most important point to pull from this is that we must never forget God. We can never forget what He has brought us out of. Never forget our past. Now I’m not saying to hold onto the past and use it as a tool to condemn yourself because when you choose Christ you are a new creature. “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold the new has come” (2nd Corinthians 5:17). The purpose of never forgetting our past struggles is only to use that to serve as a testimony to God. When we look back at the mess that some of our lives were in before we gave it to God, it stands as a testimony to God’s power, to His grace, to His mercy, to His Love, and ultimately to his faithfulness.
The interesting thing about our walk as demonstrated by the children of Israel is that we don’t realize how faithful God is to us until we make mistakes and fall out of proper relationship with Him. So many times we mess up….even when God gives us instructions on what to do to keep from messing up, we still don’t listen and end up making mistakes. But God is sooooo faithful that he still redeems us.
Proverbs 106 talks about how the children of Israel received instruction from God about how to remain in relationship with Him, but they still fall time and time again. The awesome thing is that even after not heeding God’s instructions, being the magnificent loving God He is, He still remains loyal and faithful to them.
It’s amazing to me how much God loves us! We are so not deserving of the faithfulness of God, but because we are His children and because He loves us we are privileged. If you have taken anything away from this, I hope it is that you should never forget God. Once He has delivered you and given you the promised He said He would, don’t forget Him. Always worship Him and be faithful to Him. Cherish God’s faithfulness to us and have peace in the fact that even when we make a mistake he is right there to pick us up again.
Thanks so much for taking the time out of your busy day to read this. I appreciate it more than you could ever know. Until next time remember:
"Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light" (1 Peter 2:9).
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