“If, ” God says, we walk in His ways, retain and execute His commandments, He will supply provision, spiritual richness, serenity, authority, and most of all His presence. This is a promise from our Lord based not on our performance, but our determination—God alone knows the heart.
Read the Leviticus passage again. Are you suffering in any of these areas? The solution is simple—determine in your heart to walk in all His ways. Failure is not determined by how often we stumble; the reality is that stumbling is a distinctive of the believer’s tenacity. No, failure comes with disobedience; when we falsely believe there is another way to achieve that which God desires to provide by His grace and mercy. What does failure look like? Read the following passage:
But if you do not obey Me, and do not observe all these commandments, and if you despise My statutes, or if your soul abhors My judgments, so that you do not perform all My commandments, but break My covenant, I also will do this to you: I will even appoint terror over you, wasting disease and fever which shall consume the eyes and cause sorrow of heart. And you shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it. I will set My face against you, and you shall be defeated by your enemies. Those who hate you shall reign over you, and you shall flee when no one pursues you. ’And after all this, if you do not obey Me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins. I will break the pride of your power; I will make your heavens like iron and your earth like bronze. And your strength shall be spent in vain; for your land shall not yield its produce, nor shall the trees of the land yield their fruit. ’Then, if you walk contrary to Me, and are not willing to obey Me, I will bring on you seven times more plagues, according to your sins. Leviticus 26:14-21
Why So Brutal?
Do these things seem brutal to you? For many it seems God has gone way over the top for those who choose to disobey Him. That’s not how I see it. I see a God who loves us so very much; He has made it vividly clear—as far as the east is from the west, as different black is from white, God has made the choice an obvious one. Plainly said, “You can’t blame the label maker when you choose to sip the poison.”
A Liberal Return Policy
What you have to love about our God is that He keeps the door open for a very long time. He will allow us to walk in disobedience for years and years, and then use those consequences we’ve endured as the very road signs pointing us towards salvation in His Son Jesus the Christ.
But if they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers, with their unfaithfulness in which they were unfaithful to Me, and that they also have walked contrary to Me…then I will remember My covenant with Jacob, and My covenant with Isaac and My covenant with Abraham I will remember; I will remember the land. Leviticus 26:40 + 42
He Dwells -- The B'log in My Eye 