The scripture for today, September 4 (9/4), is Daniel 9:4 as found in the Old Testament of the Bible:
“I prayed to the Lord my God and confessed: ‘O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with all who love him and obey his commands….’ “
A lot of people in the world think that God should feel obligated to take them to heaven. After all, they are fairly good, and better than some. God couldn’t possibly in all good conscience turn them away.
Yet, their entire life they resent God. Mostly they don’t like his commands; they don’t want anyone telling them what to do or not do. Or they claim to love God but create their own commands that just aren’t in the Bible, making themselves God.
Ultimately, heaven is God’s home, not ours. He is not obligated to invite anyone into His home. Besides, only perfection can live with God who is perfect. It only takes one sin to make us an imperfect sinner.
So how do we become perfect? That’s where God’s awesomeness is demonstrated. By following Jesus who was perfect and never sinned, and obeying Jesus’ few commands, God considers us perfect by proxy.
If we don’t have time for God, he doesn’t have time for us. If we don’t heed God’s Words, he doesn’t heed our words. It’s so simple to understand. Do we believe it?
“Though one wishes to dispute with Him [God], he could not answer Him one time out of a thousand.”
“Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ Philip asked.”
” ‘What do you want with us, Son of God?’ they shouted. ‘Have you come here to torture us before the appointed time?’ “
“Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way, he asked them, ‘Who do people say I am?’ “
” ‘Who are you?’ they asked. ‘Just what I have been claiming all along,’ Jesus replied.”
“For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.”
“As for the other events of Jehoram’s reign, and all he did, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Judah?”
“I walk in the way of righteousness, along the paths of justice.”
“When men tell you to consult mediums and spiritists who whisper and mutter, should not a people inquire of their God? Why consult the dead on behalf of the living? To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, they have no light of dawn.”