Thursday, March 6, 2014

Year 4, Day 65: Exodus 16

Theological Commentary: Click Here 


Discipleship Focus: Father, Identity, Obedience

  • Father: This is the pinnacle of the Covenant Triangle.  God is the Father.  He is the creator.  He is love.  Our relationship with the Father is rooted in His love for us.  We get our identity through Him.
  • Identity: Our true identity comes from the Father.  Only when our identity comes from God can we be obedient in ways that satisfy our person to our core.
  • Obedience: Genuine and satisfying obedience comes out of our identity.  Our true identity comes only from Father.

Today I couldn’t help but think about the concept of identity.  As I read through the account of the grumbling of the Hebrew people I can’t help but see myself among them.  God sets me up with a life of little want.  Yet how much do I still grumble?  God gives me what I need, but is that really the identity that I want?  Do I really want what God wants for me, or do I struggle making my own identity based on my own hopes and dreams?

Or take all those people in the story who are running around not following directions.  Those people who save some manna for the next day even though they are told not to do so.  Or those people who go out to collect manna on the seventh day when they are told to collect double on the prior day because there wouldn’t be anything the next day.  How am I any different from them?  Am I obedient to the identity that God gives me?  Or am I really obedient to how I think life should work?

I am grateful that I serve a forgiving God.  I am grateful that I serve a God who is primarily interested in relationship rather than perfection.  If God wanted perfection from me, I’d have no chance.  But I can repent.  I can return to God.  I can mess up, listen, come back to Him, and know that He will forgive.  That’s the Father desiring me to obediently live out the identity that He has chosen for me.


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