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God In The Miscellaneous

Let Him Rule Your Minutiae

SYNOPSIS: If you weary of the constant call to holiness, even in the minutiae of your life, never forget the fruit of total obedience to God’s call: “so that the Lord your God may bless you in everything you do.” (Deut. 23:20) If that’s the outcome of allowing God to rule over every single detail of you, then his constant, micromanaging oversight is not just a small price to pay, it’s the best investment you’ll ever make.

Going Deep // Focus: Deuteronomy 23:20

…So that the Lord your God may bless you in everything you do in the land you are about to enter and occupy.

Miscellaneous. That is the section heading one of the Bible translations gives the multi-faceted, or you might even say, disconnected rules and regulations God’s gives to Israel for daily living. Some of the rules are earthy, and even awkward to talk about—I’ll let you read them for yourself. Some of them seem a bit onerous and unfair. Some of them are clearly understandable in light of God’s holiness and how he wants us to worship him. And some of them are quite practical and obviously make a lot of sense.

As you read the list, you get the feeling that God is micromanaging his people. And as you read in hindsight the history of the Israelites, that is exactly what they needed. They needed someone to tell them what to do, where to go, and how to live.

So do we! However, we resist that kind of intrusion into our lives, even by God. We don’t want a religion that restricts our freedom or a church that give us lists of do’s and don’t’s to follow or a preacher who dictates our behavior. We want our freedom to choose.

In reality, God has allowed us that very thing, our freedom. As New Testament believers, we are free from the restrictive minutiae of the Mosaic law. It didn’t work anyway. Controlling people’s behaviors in the Old Testament didn’t change their hearts. That is the definite assessment of the New Testament. And that is precisely why Jesus came to pay the price for our failure to live up to the requirements of the law. That is why the Holy Spirit was sent to live within us, continually empowering us in heart and mind to live in holiness unto the Lord. We just couldn’t do it without his daily, moment-by-moment help.

That is why we need a micromanaging God. At least I do—and I have a feeling you do too! We need that constant empowerment of God’s Spirit. We need his daily enablement to do the right thing. And we need his continual infilling to help us want to love God wholehearted and live in holiness. We even need the Holy Spirit to help us want to want to love the Lord and live righteously. Of course, we have to do our part to love God and live righteously. Like the Israelites, doing has to accompany being. Since we are the children of God, we now must act like it! But still, we need a God to micromanage our lives. That is what Brother Lawrence, the famous monk best known for “Practicing the Presence of God,” was seeking when he prayed,

O my God, since thou art with me, and I must now, in obedience to thy commands, apply my mind to these outward things, I beseech thee to grant me the grace to continue in thy presence; and to this end do thou prosper me with thy assistance, receive all my works, and possess all my affections.

And if you ever get tired of that, if you are ever wearied by the constant call to holiness, even in the minutiae of life, never forget the fruit of total obedience: so that the Lord your God may bless you in everything you do in the land.

If that is the outcome of allowing God to rule over the details of me, then constant oversight is a small price to pay.

Going Deeper With God: You are not under the law; you cannot gain righteousness by strict adherence to the Mosaic code. That was the whole point of Jesus’ death and resurrection. That is the whole point of salvation by grace through faith. That is the whole point of the empower presence of the Holy Spirit. Even still, he gives you the want to and the power to live a life of holiness. Are you allowing him to control you to that end even in the smallest details of your life? If not, repent of your rebellion and surrender it to God.

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When Not To Mind Your Own Business

Don't Ignore Your Responsibility

SYNOPSIS: Both Moses and Jesus said it: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus further clarified that in the Parable of the Good Samaritan by defining “neighbor” as anyone who is within our ability to love and help. Then he upped the ante by saying in no uncertain terms that loving them was equally important as loving God. Plain and simple: you love your God when you love your neighbor. Now that is true social responsibility!

Going Deep // Focus: Deuteronomy 22:1-4

If you see your neighbor’s ox or sheep or goat wandering away, don’t ignore your responsibility. Take it back to its owner. If its owner does not live nearby or you don’t know who the owner is, take it to your place and keep it until the owner comes looking for it. Then you must return it. Do the same if you find your neighbor’s donkey, clothing, or anything else your neighbor loses. Don’t ignore your responsibility. If you see that your neighbor’s donkey or ox has collapsed on the road, do not look the other way. Go and help your neighbor get it back on its feet!

Both Moses and Jesus said it: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus further clarified that statement in the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37) by defining for us that our neighbor is anyone who is within our ability to love and help. He then upped the ante on neighborly love by saying that it was right next to loving God in order of importance:

“Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?” Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:36-40)

“Equally important.” Said another way, that means you cannot love God without loving your neighbor. That is a pretty clear and strong message Jesus is sending anyone who would love God.

So what ever happened to “love your neighbor as yourself”? Wouldn’t you agree that in our modern don’t-stick-your-nose-in-someone-else’s-business culture that we treat neighborly love as optional? We are reluctant to open up our lives—and our homes—for fear of what it might cost us. We may have to actually get involved in their lives, spend time with them, along with our short supply of energy and money, and we might be forced to put our own privacy and convenience on the back burner. Man, this business of engaging with the guy next door is not as easy as it sounds!

And our neighbors don’t make it easy for us. They are just as reluctant to open up their lives to us. They are just as easily offended by our faith, our lifestyle and our political belief as we are theirs. If they know we are Christians, they may even gossip about us, marginalize us, declare us to be narrow and intolerant, and even take us to court for violating their safe zone. Our neighborhoods are no longer communities, they are a collection of houses in a row that serve as nothing more than bedrooms and restaurants. We now come home after work, open our garage doors, drive in, shut the door and go into our home, never appearing again until we drive off to work the next day. The back deck has replaced the front porch as the perch from which we do life. Neighboring is now a lost art.

And that is not biblical! Through Moses, God commanded his people not to mind their own business. They were to get involved. They were to help. They were to sacrifice their own convenience for the good of the community. They were to love their neighbor as they loved him. In fact, loving their neighbor was loving him.

If you desire to be an authentic follower of God, and if you desire to live under his favor, you cannot read a passage like this and remain reclusive. You have to get involved. You have to live the sacrificial life. You must be willing to risk loving your neighbor as yourself. Remember, you cannot love God if you don’t love the person within your ability to love, help, serve and have fellowship with. Within your ability—that is what defines your neighbor.

So what does that mean for you? I don’t know, but you need to think that through, and then begin to act on it. I do, too! All I know is that our love for God is stunted until we get this one right!

Going Deeper With God: Pray about loving your neighbor, not theologically, but practically. Ask God for ideas and opportunities. Then keep your eye open for a divine appointment to love God by loving your neighbor as yourself.

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The Cost of Discipleship

No Easy Believism Allowed

SYNOPSIS: Jesus made no promises of an easy, breezy, carefree Christianity. Rather, he demanded complete obedience, costly sacrifice, and selfless servanthood from those who wanted to be on his team. He told them that they would have to “eat his flesh and drink his blood” if they wanted a part in him. (John 6:53) He said people would hate them, misunderstand them, reject them, persecute them, and put them out of the synagogues. And he even promised that people would kill them, believing that in so doing they were helping God out. Yet the eleven disciples (one of them, Judas, got cold feet) fully bought into Christ’s call to costly discipleship. Will you?

Project 52 – Weekly Scripture Memory // Matthew 16:24

Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “Salvation is free…but discipleship will cost you your life.”  I’m pretty sure he was quoting Jesus on that one.

Does Christ’s call to self-denying, cross-bearing discipleship seem a little extreme in comparison to the “easy believism” that passes for some brands of discipleship today? You will likely hear a lot more about a life of comfort, security and success these days from spiritual leaders than the straight talk Jesus laid on his would-be followers.

Jesus made no promises of an easy, breezy, carefree Christianity. Rather, he demanded complete obedience, costly sacrifice, and selfless servanthood from those who wanted to be on his team. He told them that they would have to “eat his flesh and drink his blood” if they wanted a part in him. (John 6:53) He said people would hate them, misunderstand them, reject them, persecute them, and put them out of the synagogues.  And he even promised that people would kill them, believing that in so doing they were helping God out. (John 16:2)

Yet the eleven disciples (one of them, Judas, got cold feet) fully bought into Christ’s call to costly discipleship. They gave up everything they had and left everything they knew for a life that promised nothing except a chance to advance God’s kingdom in a resistant, hostile world. They fully understood that the overwhelming bulk of their rewards would come only afterwards, in the afterlife.

Despite Christ’s less than appealing recruitment campaign, however, these first disciples, followed in the years to come by countless thousands of other hungry seekers, flocked to this self-denying, cross-bearing brand of Christianity. Jesus was a tough act to follow, to say the least, but these disciples eagerly signed up—and they changed the world.

How? Simply by doing what Jesus had asked: They denied themselves, took up their crosses, followed his way daily and laid down their lives for his sake— literally in many cases. Without a political voice, financial resources, social standing, and military might, this unlikely ragtag band of followers conquered the Roman Empire in less than three hundred years.

Such was the radical power of this brand of fully committed discipleship.

Do you worry, as I do, that Christ’s call to costly discipleship would empty most churches of its people in our day? Though most believers give mental assent to cross-bearing and self-denial, in reality there is very little evidence of it in their lives, or in their churches. A.W. Tozer comments,

It has become popular to preach a painless Christianity and automatic saintliness. It has become part of our ‘instant’ culture. ‘Just pour a little water on it, stir mildly, pick up a gospel tract, and you are on your Christian way.

If Jesus rebuked Peter (Matthew 16:23) — “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men” — for suggesting Christianity without a cross, what do you suppose he would say to us who have suggested Christian discipleship without cross-bearing?

We must aggressively and boldly reject that brand of faith, because that is not the discipleship to which Jesus has called us. And that is not the discipleship that I want for my life.

How about you?

 The first mark of a disciple is not a profession of faith, but an act of obedience. ~Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

Reflect & Apply: Bonhoeffer once remarked, “Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ.” No matter how long you have been a Christian, Jesus is calling you to a more ruthless brand of discipleship. Are you ready to follow?

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Cursed In God’s Sight—Thankfully!

Jesus Paid It All

SYNOPSIS: The Law of Moses stated that anyone executed and hung on a tree must be buried the same day, for anyone who is hung is cursed in the sight of God. In the New testament, Jesus was executed for crimes against heaven. His body was hung on a tree. He was cursed in God’s sight. And while his battered body would be removed before sundown, even still, God was so grieved by the crime he represented and the punishment he bore that the Father turned his back on his dying Son. And all of this was done to Jesus with God’s permission to atone for crimes that were not his own. He was the one and only substitute that could assuage the righteous wrath of a holy God. Jesus paid it all, in full, once and forever, for your sin. Yes, cursed is the One who hung on a tree—thank God.

Going Deep // Focus: Deuteronomy 21:22-23

If someone has committed a crime worthy of death and is executed and hung on a tree, the body must not remain hanging from the tree overnight. You must bury the body that same day, for anyone who is hung is cursed in the sight of God. In this way, you will prevent the defilement of the land the Lord your God is giving you as your special possession.

Whether as a modern American you agree with the death penalty or not, it was definitely used under the Mosaic law as punishment for certain kinds of crimes. In ancient Israel, the penalty for particularly offensive sins was swift, sure and beyond brutal. And in some cases, once the guilty person was executed, their body was to be hung on a tree as a sign to all of the seriousness of sin before God and the seriousness of breaking the shalom of the community of God. Indeed, punishment of sin was savage way beyond our comfort zones.

Even then, there were regulations to mitigate the trauma of witnessing a brutalized body hanging on a tree. It was not to be left twisting in the wind, swinging from the gallows overnight, but it was to be buried within the same day. Not only was the removal of the corpse to spare the sensitivities of the community, it was also to spare the Almighty from having to view what was termed a curse: “Anyone who is hung is cursed in the sight of God.” (Deuteronomy 21:23) Perhaps the execution of a criminal was so painful to God, an all out assault on the dignity with which he created human beings, that looking upon it for some length of time would have forced him to turn his back to it.

Now as we have often seen in our journey through the Old Testament, what happened to Israel spiritually foreshadowed the coming reality of God’s Kingdom awaiting fulfillment in the New Testament. Furthermore, the things that happened to the people of Israel were warnings signs posted to deter the new community from making similar mistakes. Paul writes an entire chapter on Israel’s idolatrous and rebellion in 1 Corinthians 10 as a cautionary tale for the new community, offering this blunt warning:

These things happened to them as examples for us. They were written down to warn us who live at the end of the age. So if you think you are standing strong, be careful not to fall. (1 Corinthians 10:11-12)

The new community was warned in no uncertain terms not to fall into those same patterns of rebellion, idolatry and sin, and thereby become cursed in the sight of God, especially when Jesus had been hung on a tree in their place as one cursed of God:

But Christ has rescued us from the curse pronounced by the law. When he was hung on the cross, he took upon himself the curse for our wrongdoing. For it is written in the Scriptures, “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree. (Galatians 3:13)

Think of the similarities between the law in Deuteronomy and the death of Jesus: He was executed for crimes against heaven. His body was hung on a tree. He was cursed in the sight of God. His battered body was removed from the tree and buried the same day. Even still, God was so offended by the crime and the punishment that he turned his back on the dying Son of God. And all of this was done to Jesus by God’s decision to atone for crimes that were not his own. Jesus was the one and only substitute that could assuage the righteous wrath of a holy God. Jesus paid it all, in full, once and for all.

And he did it for sin; he did it for you. Yes cursed is the One who hung on a tree—thank God.

Going Deeper With God: Find an old hymnal and slowly, thankfully, read aloud the words to “Jesus Paid It All.” Truly, all to him you owe.

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God’s #1 Command

Fear, Not Problems, Is Your Biggest Threat

SYNOPSIS: Your biggest threat today, tomorrow and any day thereafter, will not be people, circumstances or the random forces of the universe. No, the biggest threat to you is you. More accurately, your biggest threat is fear. Fear, not problems, will paralyze your experience of the life God has in mind for you. That’s why God calls you to “fear not!”, his number one command in the Bible.

The Journey// Focus: Deuteronomy 20:1

When you go out to fight your enemies and you face horses and chariots and an army greater than your own, do not be afraid. The Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, is with you!

Your biggest threat today, tomorrow or any day thereafter, will not be people, circumstances or the random forces of the universe. No, the biggest threat to you is you. More accurately, your biggest threat is fear. Fear, not problems, will paralyze your experience of the life God has in mind for you.

Don’t be afraid! That is the number one command that God gives his people in scripture. Someone has said there are 365 “fear not’s” strategically placed from the beginning to the end of the Bible—one for every day of the year. Why? Because God knew that every day this year when you get up and head off, the enemy waiting outside your door will be the fear inside your mind. But God says, “do not be afraid!”

Easier said than done, right! I am sure that was even more so for the Israelites here in Deuteronomy 20. They were heading out the door to face literal enemies bigger, meaner, more battle-hardened and better equipped than they. Yet God’s first command to them as they prepared to possess their Promised Land was “fear not, for I brought you this far, and I wont leave you now.” Furthermore, not only was he with them, he assured them that he was out ahead of them:

For the Lord your God is going with you! He will fight for you against your enemies, and he will give you victory! (Deut. 20:4)

That is true for you, too. That is a promise that you can and should claim today: God is with you, he is ahead of you, he is fighting for you and he has already secured your victory! So listen to what God is saying to you. Proverbs 1:33 says, “Whoever listens to me will live in safety and be at ease, without fear of harm.”

So in reality, as the children of God, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Those famous words were spoken at a time when a lot of people were living in fear. The world was uncertain, World War II was about to engulf Europe, and America was in the middle of its deepest economic depression ever—before or since. And the newly elected president, Franklin Roosevelt, uttered those immortal words during his first inaugural address in 1933. He was quoting God: fear not!

There are several kinds of fear that fight for control of our lives—three in particular that are quite common and especially debilitating:

The first kind of fear is based in an irrational worry of “what if,” and it debilitates a lot of people. Someone has described this fear with a clever acronym as “False Enemies Appearing Real.”

A second kind of debilitating fear—and it’s definitely a real one—is the fear that comes from foolish living. Foolish living (“The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God,’” Psalm 14:1, 53:1) by its Biblical definition is to live as if God and his laws do not exist—to live as a practical atheist. Those who live in disregard to the Almighty and his ways cannot help but have an underlying and chronic dread of looming trouble.

The third kind of fear is that which comes when we are facing very real threats to the will of God in our lives. They are not false enemies, they are real—big, hairy, audacious threats. But just remember, they are not as big as God.

So we must learn to surrender to a fourth kind of fear: fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord is to be in awe of his person, to respect his commands, and to live in ruthless trust in his good character and unfailing promises.

Today, reject those first three debilitating fears and embrace the fourth life-giving fear by exerting trust in the God who is with you and who goes before you. If you will step out in faith to follow his leading, you will have nothing to fear.

Going Deeper: Every human being lives life in five domains: personal, familial, social, vocational and spiritual. Take some time today to assess if you are living, in reality, as a “practical atheist” in any of these areas—without regard for God and his laws. If you are, simply and sincerely repent and exert trust in the one who is with you, now and always.

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What Makes You Irresistible To God?

Faith That Walks In Trust

SYNOPSIS: Between the journey of faith and the destination of faith—faith obeys. It grits out a determined obedience in a faithful direction, by believing, trusting, and expecting that there is no more important issue in this life than to follow the call and carry out the commands of God. And it does so with great delight—not because it has to obey, but because it wants to serve. As J.R.R. Tolkien said, “In the last resort, faith is an act of will, inspired by love.”

Project 52 – Weekly Scripture Memory // Hebrews 11:6

And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

What is faith? In its simplest form, it is belief. Yet it is more that mere intellectual assent, because the Bibles tells us, “Even the demons believe—and tremble!” (James 2:19) Belief is important, but it is only the beginning; belief begins the journey of trust.

Faith that walks in trust says, “I will put my complete confidence in God and his promises—even though I may not see any evidence at this point that those promises will be fulfilled.” In fact, sometimes the evidence even seems contrary to the promises of God. But faith trusts anyway. It is sure that what is hoped for, that is, what God has promised, will come to pass, relying on that certainty as the evidence of faith itself. (Hebrews 11:1) Aquinas wrote,

Faith has to do with things that are not seen and hope with things that are not at hand. 

Trusting faith is expectant faith. It believes that God rewards. It believes that at the end of the day, the earnest journey of faith will be met with the eternal joy of God—both the joy that is revealed in the smile of God at our faithfulness (itself, the biggest and best reward of all) and the joy that is felt as the crown of righteousness (along with all the other tangible wonders of eternity awarded in that moment) is placed upon the head of the faithful.

In the meantime—in those steps taken between the journey of faith and the destination of faith—faith obeys. It grits out a long obedience in a faithful direction, believing, trusting, and expecting that there is no more important issue in this life than to follow the call and carry out the commands of God. And it does so with great delight—not because it has to, but because it wants to. As J.R.R. Tolkien said, “In the last resort, faith is an act of will, inspired by love.”

You see, faith, more than anything else, is both focused on and fueled by relationship with Almighty God himself. It is not the results of faith that drives the faithful, it is the relationship experienced along the way that is most important. That is the very heart of Hebrews 11, the greatest chapter in the Bible on the lives of the faithful. None of them saw God’s promise tangibly fulfilled in this life, but they were commended for their faith because they kept a penetrating focus on the next world as the real object of their journey. (Hebrews 11:13, 39-40) That is why God was pleased with them. (Hebrews 11:16)

You, too, can join that illustrious list of God-pleasers if you will live by faith—believing, trusting, expectant, obedient, God-focused faith.

He finds that irresistible!

To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible. ~Thomas Aquinas

Reflect & Apply:If it is impossible to please God without faith, then the most important investment of your life’s energies and resources will be in nurturing your faith. Not always an easy task, but a worthy one. Take a moment to consider what Gordon McDonald wrote about faith: “To trust in spite of the look of being forsaken, to keep crying out into the vast, whence comes no returning voice, and where seems no hearing; to see the machinery of the world pauselessly grinding on as if self-moved, caring for no life, nor shifting a hairbreadth for all entreaty, and yet believe that God is awake and utterly loving; to desire nothing but what comes meant for us from His hand; to wait patiently, ready to die of hunger, fearing only lest faith should fail—such is the victory that overcomes the world, such is faith indeed.”

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God Is Watching

So Be Careful Child Of God What You Do

SYNOPSIS: God is watching, not just over the big issues of how we treat one another, but even in the smaller ways that we might take advantage of our neighbors, or short change our customers, or do something because we can get away with it, or go light on a violation because it is a victimless crime. No matter how minor it seems to us, it is a big deal in God’s eyes. He is watching, and he cares because justice at levels big and small, seen and unseen represent his immutable character as well as his ideals for his people. We would do well to remember this: God is watching. That is not so much a threat; that is a comfort!

The Journey // Focus: Deuteronomy 19:14

When you arrive in the land the Lord your God is giving you as your special possession, you must never steal anyone’s land by moving the boundary markers your ancestors set up to mark their property.

When I was little, we would sing a song in Sunday School called, O Be Careful Little Eyes. The song taught that we were not only to take care what our eyes saw, but what our ears heard, what our mouths said, where our feet went, and what our hands did:

O be careful little hands what you do
O be careful little hands what you do
There’s a Father up above
And He’s looking down in love
So, be careful little hands what you do

The lesson of the song was clear: a loving God was watching us at all times and he was quite concerned that we always did the right thing. Good theology could be found in those lyrics: God is loving, God is Father, God is omniscient, God is omnipresent, and God is just. All true, and we would do well to remember each piece of that theology, even as adults.

When we come to Deuteronomy 19, we find that God is expressing the same concern for the children of Israel. He is quite determined that when they come into the land of promise, his justice would be represented in their legal system:

  • Cities of refuge were to be established: Deuteronomy 19:1-3
  • A process was to be set up for adjudicating both manslaughter and murder: Deuteronomy 19:4-5, 11-13
  • Rules for the evidence needed for a conviction were to be followed: Deuteronomy 19:15
  • Protocols for witnesses to a crime were to be obeyed: Deuteronomy 19:16-17
  • Procedures for judges were to be defined: Deuteronomy 19:18
  • Sentencing guidelines were to be definite: Deuteronomy 19:19-21

And in the middle of those very serious legal protocols, there is another rule issued that seems a bit out of place because it doesn’t seem to be at the same level of intensity as the others: the honoring of boundary lines (Deuteronomy 19:14). By comparison, this might seem to us to fall into the category of a petty crime. We might be tempted to adjudicate it as a “white collar crime.” We might give in to going a little easier on the violator in this particular case.

But even though this crime didn’t leave a dead body, and while it was done out of the view of witnesses, and most likely would have no physical evidence—just a property owner’s word against the accused, since land surveys were not available in those days—we should not miss this cogent fact: this was an act that God had witnessed. And it was a big deal to him.

The point being that God is watching, not just over the big issues of how we treat one another, but even in the smaller ways that we might take advantage of our neighbors, or short change our customers, or do something because we can get away with it, or go light on a violation because it is a victimless crime.

Not in God’s eyes. He is watching, and he cares because justice at levels big and small, seen and unseen represents his immutable character as well as his ideals for his people. That was true for the Israelites, and that is true for us. We would do well to remember,

There’s a Father up above
And He’s looking down in love
So, be careful little child what you do!

God is watching. That is not a threat; that is a comfort!

Going Deeper: Are there any areas of moral compromise in your life—even in little things? God cares, and he will reward our every effort to bring what might seem like things that are no big deal under his loving rulership.