Nov 7

Deuteronomy 6:4-9
4 “Listen, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD alone.
5 And you must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength.
6 And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today.
7 Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up.
8 Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders.
9 Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Have you ever seen the members of an army platoon going through their drills? At each command from their drill sergeant, the group moves as if they are one. "Right face!" Everyone turns. "Forward march!" Everyone marches. "Company, halt!" No one moves-not a muscle. After months of hard work, these men and women know that when their drill sergeant gives a command, they'd better respond-and quickly. Not only that, but many of them discover that their commitment to obedience pays off: They become stronger, faster, more agile, and more effective. God has given commands to us, too. He doesn't shout in our ears like a drill sergeant. He doesn't make us run ten miles with forty-pound backpacks. He doesn't make us drop to the ground and do twenty push-ups if we make a mistake. But he has given commands for us to follow day after day. So, what kind of soldier are you in the army of God? Are you as committed to following God's commands as the members of an army squad or platoon are to following their officer's commands? Are you as quick to respond as they are? Or do you look for another way that makes it look like you're doing what God's asking when you're really more committed to having your own way? Being committed to God means spending time in prayer and reading God's commands (the Bible) each day. Being committed to God means memorizing his words to us, which makes his commands easy to remember and follow because they're written in our heart. Being committed to God means aligning our will with his. Being committed to obeying God's commands will pay off for you, too, just as obeying the drill sergeant does for armed forces recruits. As you spend time with him and his Word, as you commit yourself to obeying him, you'll become stronger, better, quicker to do what's right.

REFLECT: Being committed to something means giving it your wholehearted devotion. Are there things in your life that you're more devoted to than God? Which of God's commands are easy for you to follow? Which are difficult?

PRAY: "Lord, I'm committed to building my relationship with you day by day. Help me to respond quickly and willingly to your commands, especially to your command to..."

I get the day off because of take your kids to work day......

Being committed to god is not an easy thing. We can be at times when everything is going well. But when hard points in our lives come, what kind of Christian will we be to god?
It's hard to keep a consistency to talk to god. But as we grow, we learn to be stronger and able to maintain our strength in our faith.
As we get older, things we have to do pile up. Our priorities may change. All these changes in our lives shouldn't not affect our relationships with god though.
Always keep god in your heart and thoughts and talk to him everyday so that we can keep that healthy relationship with god strong.

Spent the day at my Dad's workplace xD

6 "And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today."

I still struggle with sacrificing things for God's sake. A lot of people probably have trouble like me. Even if it is something really small, like not browsing facebook for 15 minutes to do my devo.
Like it said in the story, we have to train ourselves to become a better Christian. We aren't going to wake up one day and say "From now on, I'm going to follow everything that the Bible says!"
Also, you shouldn't force yourself to change. You have to actually WANT to change, and you have to try with all of your effort!

Praising the Lord is a practice.

I think that all practices are something that can never be completed. A short comparison is going to be written in red, (because, red is cool and my name is in red font.);
If we held a spiritual value in numbers, God would hold the number "infinite" in terms of sequences of neverending whole numbers (999999999....so on so forth). That being said, we have this infinite gap to close with just ourselves and the people on the Earth. Jesus is this holy *thing* (can't think of a word for it) that bridges this infinite distance that's been covered with our sin. After that, he gave us commands to follow to raise our spiritual value, and get closer to God.

So think about it, we will never really be perfect in this practice, because the limit of perfection is infinite. No matter how "close" we claim to be to perfection, it's always going to be compared to something else that is further to perfection than we are. For example, we would say that we are 79 x more in spiritual value than 40 x. Hence being "ridiculously" closer to perfection, but still, that infinite number keeps on growing, and I think that should inspire us to want to dive deeper into the practice of Praising the Lord.

it was take your kids to work day! i just chilled at my moms store
its not always easy being committed to God and trying to be a follower of Him. there are always doubts and little voices in our heads that completely throw us off in our faith but it can also help us learn how to become better children of Christ. Yeni told us on Saturday that it is the devil that is trying to whisper us and tempt us into doing bad deeds and turn against God. we know what voices in our heads are right and we know what to ignore because we have God with us, being there with us and trying to guide us into the right path.
sorry for short devotion but thats what i pretty much got today! see you all saturday!

As of right now, i think i speak for everyone when i say that we have thigns that we devote our lives to more than we do to God. This is because we arent spiritually ready yet and its just a matter of time when we are able to devote everything we have to God.
Commandments and rules of God may be easy and simple to follow, some may be difficult... when we are able to follow all of Gods commands and try to be more in the figure of Christ, we will understand how important God is and how he can work miracles in us starting from scratch.
I know its hard to give everything for God, but we have to be strong in faith because that is the only proof we have in our walk with God and i hope we all can learn to udnerstand that God is over everything and we shouldnt hesitate to devote our lives to him. Evne though we arent ready now, we should train and obtain more and more faith to try to reach that goal of devoting everything to God.

There isn't anything I do religiously. If anything, I DON'T consistently praise Him. There should be no reason to say that we put things above God when we don't praise him consistently.
Recently I've been thinking of how God thinks of me, and He really MUST be patient to put up with all my sins.
You can't put him as #1 when you don't even have God as a priority, constantly.
Can't exactly incorporate him on your list, when his name is erased and written, over and over.