Obedience Is Grace Dependent

TNIV Scripture for Thursday, September 18, 2008 [Deuteronomy 28:11-13]

The LORD will grant you abundant prosperity--in the fruit of your womb, the young of your livestock and the crops of your ground--in the land he swore to your ancestors to give you. The LORD will open the heavens, the storehouse of his bounty, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands. You will lend to many nations but will borrow from none. The LORD will make you the head, not the tail. If you pay attention to the commands of the LORD your God that I give you this day and carefully follow them, you will always be at the top, never at the bottom.

God demands obedience from His people throughout the Old and the New Testaments and always there is great reward promised for that obedience (with an emphasis on physical reward in the Old Testament and spiritual reward in the New Testament). But the bottom line message of the Bible is that people can't obey God without being constantly dependent upon His grace. Grace dependence generally grows out of failure to live up to God's standard. May you embrace your failures as God's powerful and painful reminders that you need Him and His grace every moment of every day.

God
Source of abundant prosperity
Source of a storehouse of His bounty
Source of rain
Source of commands
Demands obedience to His commands
One who appoints the head

Beth Warlick, 9/18/2008