love the Lord – Somerset Church of Christ

Proverbs 3:5-6 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.” The word Lord is the most frequently used word in all of the Bible. It appears between 7,000 and 8,000 times in the scriptures. One word. What if one word can shift our entire lives and outcome in everything we do?

The Lord’s personal name was revealed to Moses in the burning bush as “I am.” God is the beginning and the end. God made it clear that his name would be known throughout the Earth for all eternity. The Lord told Moses to speak to Aaron and his sons and bless the people of Israel this way: “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift his countenance upon you and give you peace.” And “so shall they put my name upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them” (Numbers 6:24-27).

The Lord is saying that he will make his face shine upon them and that he will lift up his countenance (the same word for face) upon them. The Lord’s blessing means that he will look at them with his face with pleasure as one gazes into someone with whom they are well pleased. When we trust in the Lord in all that we do, his face shines upon us and he will make our paths straight!

Our theme this year is “God First.” When Moses went up on the mountain to receive the Ten Commandments, God also gave him the greatest commandment. That is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deuteronomy 6:5 ESV). God reminded the Israelites to follow the commandments, “that it may go well with you.”

The biggest part of loving God and following his commandments is to bind them on the heart (vs. 6). Learning the commandments so they can be lived out was not just a head exercise, but was one of the heart too. And the Israelites “shall teach them (the commandments) to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (vs. 7).

God was essentially saying that he was to be on the hearts and minds of people constantly. This is far removed from how we connect with God today. Many Christians have been Christians for decades and have never read the Bible from cover-to-cover. The Israelites, on the other hand, recited them every day, seven days a week. God commanded them to impress them upon their kids and to talk about them all the time. This new year will be a year of shifting our priorities and putting God first in all that we do.