Distractions

A book that I am reading has this quote from Hans Hofmann, an artisan born in Bavaria, "If you want the necessary to stand out, you have to get rid of the unnecessary." This quote is shared in the shadow of a story about King Hezekiah and his actions of taking down all that distracted the Israelites from true worship of God the father (2 Kings 18 and following). Then I pondered the many things that are obvious in distracting me from growth and worship.

One fear that I have is that I spend so much time dealing with the large and obvious distractions that I have let creep in the subtle to ruin my growth.

Another fear is that what I have let creep in I rationalize as necessary to worship and growth.

then I am left with a week and stunted spiritual life without the stamina to withstand the struggles that are coming my way. How can I expect myself to grow if I am distracted? How can I remove the distractions if I cannot recognize them or identify them as distractions?

What is the first thing that King Hezekiah does when presented with potential war with the Assyrians? 2 Kings 19:1 "When King Hezekiah heard this, he tore his clothes and put on sackcloth and went into the temple of the Lord."

Now, of course all of my struggles pale in the light of this potential distraction. I am not anywhere near pondering war, death, battles, surrender, captivity, or the like. I am instead dealing with the subtlety of the unnecessary that ruins my personal growth.

He of course wins in God's great plan and timing.

so, how necessary is the unnecessary? What is unnecessary?

I can point out the obvious. Then the more time I spend with the Lord the eaiser it will be to remove the unobvious and unnecessary.

Drive Safe

Purge

What drives us? What keeps us fueled up to face the challenges that Life throws at us? How are we growing ourselves? Do we expect others to feed us? Do we expect our bible reading once a month to feed us for the whole month? What do we need and are we willing to go get what we need? Maybe what we need is to PURGE some evil from our lives.

This last month I have been reading through Deuteronomy (Yes, the Old Testament) and I noticed the frequency of the use of the phrase, “Purge the Evil from among you.” This phrase occurs 10 times and one additional time in a different phrasing, “purge from yourselves…” This shows how much God desires his chosen people to be pure and free from Evil. Deuteronomy ends with Moses describing the rewards for obedience and the curses for disobedience. This is a big deal to God. So, how do we do it? How do we keep our way pure? Psalm 119:9-16 says it pretty plainly. The NIV Translation says it this way:

“ 9 How can a young man keep his way pure?    By living according to your word.
 10 I seek you with all my heart; do not let me stray from your commands.
 11 I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.”

It really comes down to spiritual disciplines. Have we been taught to feed ourselves? Do we know how to feed ourselves? Have you tasted the Word of God and found it to be good? What we need is to fill ourselves with the fuel that is the Word of God. To know His standard. To know and implement God’s word and commands.

LEARN SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINES

God's desire is for His Chosen people to Purge the Evil from among them. How can we do this if we don’t know how? We can clean our houses but if we don’t know how to keep it clean, it will just get all muddied up again and possibly even worse. We need to be taught to keep it clean and then we can and will be a blessing to others.