Our Life is the Result of Our Response to God's Word

Your life is the result of your response to God's word. This is not hard to prove. It makes perfect sense to everyone who knows God. And yet, many Christians are totally oblivious to it until it is explicitly pointed out to them.

In the 29th and 30th chapters of Deuteronomy, blessings and curses are laid out. The summary begins at 30:19—

 I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days...

 What was the runaway bride KatieLyn's response to His Word? There is a parable for that!  
     Mark 4:14, "The sower sows the word." KatieLyn matches the seed sown in verses 16 and 17.

When they hear the word, immediately receive it with joy; and they have no firm root in themselves, but are only temporary; then, when affliction or persecution arises because of the word, immediately they fall away.

 God told her who her husband should be. She immediately received it with joy. She had not developed a root in herself; she lived at home with a codependent mother who is highly skilled in manipulation and who used KatieLyn as a rent-paying scrubwoman. Then, affliction and distress arose because Gwen, her mother, was jealous and started provoking fights. As part of Gwen's mechanization, (I said she was a master manipulator,) she got KatieLyn to doubt that she'd really heard the Lord's will for her. Persecution came in the form of subtly layering on guilt trips. Wasn't Katie supposed to "honor" her mother?

KatieLyn's parents had never made her develop a root system of her own. She had always been dependent upon them. So when her mother hated Joe because she saw him as a threat who would "take Katie away from her," the rootless KatieLyn was unable to stand. Worse still, she now blames Joe like her mother does!

This is abusive parenting and the kind of stuff that gives homeschooling a bad name. KatieLyn was living in a bubble and she knew it. The Lord was providing a place for her to begin growing and flourishing n a new field, but she balked and ran back to her overly sheltering mommy.

Today, her life is a result of her response to God's word, and she is further behind now than she was a year ago. 

What is the proper response to God's word? 

 I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you. Psalm 199:11

Paul and Barnabas understood the proper response to God's word, and in one short sentence in Act 13:46, they explain why Israel was sent out in the diaspora.

And Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly, saying, “It was necessary that the word of God be spoken first to you. Since you thrust it aside and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we are turning to the Gentiles.

They thrust it aside and judged themselves unworthy. God did not judge them. The judged themselves after they thrust God's Word aside. Earlier this month a posted a blog titled "Destination: the Wilderness."  It profiled three Old Testament characters who ran away from God's Word. The all ended up in the Wilderness, and when God caught up with them, some time days  and other times decades later, He told them all essentially the same thing: You have to go back.
The New Testament pattern deals with the entire nation of Israel, not an individual, and the time lapse is nearly 2000 years. Only since 1948 could they return.

The Lesson
This is serious stuff for those who thrust aside God's word. Their response radically changes the results they get in their lives. The good part is that Joe will not have to suffer for KatieLyn's faithlessness forever. When the Jews rejected Jesus, God turned to the Gentiles. And their response surely warmed God's heart. We read, "And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord, and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed." 

Eventually, Paul and Barnabas "shook off the dust of their feet against" the Jews who incited the persecution (of Paul and Barnabas).  This is what Jesus had said to do in Matthew 10:14, "Whoever does not receive you, nor heed your words, as you go out of that house or that city, shake the dust off your feet." If the Jews were thinking "good riddance," then they probably had rejected 10:15 as well. "Truly I say to you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city." This is serious stuff for those who thrust aside God's word.