Divine Order anyone?

     

You know, it seems to me a person, in the church world, could live and die and never hear the words "divine order".   Isn't that strange that though we serve a very orderly God, so many of us have no idea of what His order for us might be?   It is even more strange considering the fact that Jesus gave us two commands and gave them by order. The first, and the great, is to love God with all our being.  The second, and not called great, is that we are to love our brother.  There are those, with bats in the belfrey, who say we are to pay no attention to these two commands or the order of these commands.  They don't really have to encourage most of the church that way, they were not paying any attention anyway.  

   When Jesus numbered these two commands, he set forth a divine order.  He said on these two commands hang all the words of the law and the prophets.  That makes them the foundation for whatever spiritual life, structure or understanding you are building.  That makes the guidebook by which you interpret all that God has said or has to say.  With divine order in mind, you are building a structure, whether that be a life or a church, designed to love God with all its being.  Without divine order, you are building on whatever you, or some other man, decides to build on and you will never arrive at divine order.  Of course, you may not notice it right away, because there will be so many others around you who have also missed divine order.  All the enemy of God has ever had to do to steal the love and worship of God is to simply get us to flip the numbers, putting two where one should be.  When it happens, we have missed God and may never know it - until we make heaven.   And then - we will discover it was all about loving God from the very beginning.

     Does God care?  I think He does.  He has sent the Holy Ghost to shed His love abroad in our hearts.  That is not just His love for us, but also our love for Him.  The uniqueness of this covenant, above all  people and their covenant before us, is that we, by the power of the Holy Ghost can love God with all our being, if only we will.   Of course, it is easier not to.  There is a fight about the matter. The enemy of God has always had in mind to steal the love and worship of God and works hard at doing so.  So, as long as we are not going that way anyway, the journey takes less energy, the battle less fierce. The path away from loving God  with all our being is a down-hill slope and quiet simply so because the resistance of the enemy is so much less.

   Did you know that by far the most commanded subjects in the Bible are to praise, give thanks, rejoice and worship God?  Why do you suppose that is?  It is God asking for us to express our love and giving us His desire for how to do it.  It is God laying out divine order with instructions on how to express that divine order. Approaching God is not done just any old way your taste demands.  It is done God's way.  It is done following His instructions.
 
   When we stand before God, I think this will all matter.  If we will be judged by our works and our first work was not the love and worship of God, I think it will matter.  He saved us to worship Him and we missed the point.  If we will be judged on how we made the journey, I think He will take note if we were faithful to love and worship Him, with all that we are, to the very end.