SEEING DEEP
with Denise Pass
BIBLE READING PLAN
Finding Renewal with God
Is anyone weary today? Maybe feel like you are missing what God has for you? You might need a renewal in your relationship with God. Renewal and revival come as we admit our need for it. Finding renewal with God happens when we come and ask Him to take our brokenness and make us complete in Him. And renewal is not a once-and-done thing or a mountaintop experience. It is a moment by moment walk with God as He opens our eyes to understand His goodness and His word. It is recognizing our waywardness and abiding in His Spirit so we lie in a covenant relationship with the One Who made us.
Bible Reading: Deuteronomy 29-30
Today’s reading is from Deuteronomy 29-30. It is a beautiful reminder from Moses to return to God.
Moses is reminding the people of God about what God has brought them through. He shares this so they can renew their covenant with God. Sometimes we need renewal in our relationship with God, right? We can grow complacent or just frankly take things for granted.
Yesterday I was overcome with the reality that I can breathe freely now and that I can walk almost normally, too. I thanked God that I can breathe and walk. And it hit me how that has been something I have taken for granted for most of my life.
How about you? We have an invitation today to renew awareness of what God has done for us. We are so blessed. Just to be alive. Being blessed does not mean we have a perfect life. When we look to life to give us peace or happiness, we will be disappointed. But it is when we are renewed in our relationship with God that we have joy unending.
Finding Renewal with God—Look to the past
Deuteronomy 29:2-9
“2 Moses summoned all Israel and said to them, “You have seen with your own eyes everything the Lord did in Egypt to Pharaoh, to all his officials, and to his entire land. 3 You saw with your own eyes the great trials and those great signs and wonders.
4 Yet to this day the Lord has not given you a mind to understand, eyes to see, or ears to hear. 5 I led you forty years in the wilderness; your clothes and the sandals on your feet did not wear out; 6 you did not eat food or drink wine or beer—so that you might know that I am the Lord your God.
7 When you reached this place, King Sihon of Heshbon and King Og of Bashan came out against us in battle, but we defeated them. 8 We took their land and gave it as an inheritance to the Reubenites, the Gadites, and half the tribe of Manasseh. 9 Therefore, observe the words of this covenant and follow them, so that you will succeed in everything you do.”
Finding Renewal with God—Look to the past
Moses first reminded God’s people where they had come from so they could freshly know where they want to go in the future. We get lost in the mire of life and need reminders, don’t we? Looking at the past and what God has done for and in us helps to bring us to a place of renewal.
Finding Renewal with God—Mindset Renewal
Notice that Moses said in verse 4 that these people just did not get it. “4 Yet to this day the Lord has not given you a mind to understand, eyes to see, or ears to hear.
Once we have reviewed our past, our minds need to be renewed in order for us to experience revival or renewal with God.
So how do we renew our minds?
Romans 12:2 ESV
“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
Philippians 4:8 ESV
“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”
Finding Renewal with God—Knowing God
Moses also said that the journey was about knowing God—not just getting to the destination.
“5 I led you forty years in the wilderness; your clothes and the sandals on your feet did not wear out; 6 you did not eat food or drink wine or beer—so that you might know that I am the Lord your God.”
If we could just keep that perspective! We can be all about just getting there. But God invites us to fellowship with Him along the way each day.
Finding Renewal with God—Continually
This renewal with God is not a one-time mountaintop experience. We were not meant to live our lives apart from God. This covenant was meant to last.
Deuteronomy 29:10-15
“10 “All of you are standing today before the Lord your God—your leaders, tribes, elders, officials, all the men of Israel, 11 your dependents, your wives, and the resident aliens in your camps who cut your wood and draw your water— 12 so that you may enter into the covenant of the Lord your God, which he is making with you today, so that you may enter into his oath 13 and so that he may establish you today as his people and he may be your God as he promised you and as he swore to your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
14 I am making this covenant and this oath not only with you, 15 but also with those who are standing here with us today in the presence of the Lord our God and with those who are not here today.”
This means our home, our church, our culture, is to be infused with the LORD. I remember my Dad visiting me one time many years ago. When he walked into my home, tears filled his eyes. “The presence of God is here” he said. Over the years he would wonder why I centered my life around God – it seemed over the top – a little too zealous, perhaps. And yet in that moment and in many moments since, he now understands why.
Knowing God is not a religion. We think we are living to scratch an existence in this world, but that will never satisfy.
It is when we surround ourselves daily with God and His word that we have true peace and are continually renewed. Christ infused in every aspect of our lives. His precious word renewing our mind so we have understanding.
Finding Renewal with God—Root Out the Bitter Root
Bitterness can also cloud our relationship with God. We can become negative and jaded.
Deuteronomy 29:18(b)
“Be sure there is no root among you bearing poisonous and bitter fruit.”
Finding Renewal with God—Be Faithful to God
Deuteronomy 29:24-27
“24 All the nations will ask, ‘Why has the Lord done this to this land? Why this intense outburst of anger?’ 25 Then people will answer, ‘It is because they abandoned the covenant of the Lord, the God of their ancestors, which he had made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt. 26 They began to serve other gods, bowing in worship to gods they had not known—gods that the Lord had not permitted them to worship. 27 Therefore the Lord’s anger burned against this land, and he brought every curse written in this book on it.”
Deuteronomy 30:17-18
“17 But if your heart turns away and you do not listen and you are led astray to bow in worship to other gods and serve them, 18 I tell you today that you will certainly perish and will not prolong your days in the land you are entering to possess across the Jordan.”
We don’t have to let our hearts turn away. But we can become deceived and not recognize the slow fade. We must be faithful to God.
Ephesians 4:17-24 is a reminder of how this slow fade happens.
“17 Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. 18 They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. 19 They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.
20 But that is not the way you learned Christ!— 21 assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, 22 to put off your old self,[f] which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, 23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”
Finding Renewal with God—Surender
Friends, it is not too hard to walk with God. It is too hard to not walk with God. We invite needless suffering in our lives and endure this life apart from the One Who made us.
Deuteronomy 30:11-15
“This command that I give you today is certainly not too difficult or beyond your reach. 12 It is not in heaven so that you have to ask, ‘Who will go up to heaven, get it for us, and proclaim it to us so that we may follow it?’ 13 And it is not across the sea so that you have to ask, ‘Who will cross the sea, get it for us, and proclaim it to us so that we may follow it?’
14 But the message is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, so that you may follow it. 15 See, today I have set before you life and prosperity, death and adversity. 16 For I am commanding you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commands, statutes, and ordinances, so that you may live and multiply, and the Lord your God may bless you in the land you are entering to possess.”
The reason it is not too difficult is that God has given His Holy Spirit and His Word. He reveals His truth to us so we can live it. He is enough.
Scripture of the Day: Deuteronomy 29:29
“The hidden things belong to the Lord our God, but the revealed things belong to us and our children forever, so that we may follow all the words of this law.”
Friends, the truth is that we all need renewal daily in God. Let’s pray.
Application
- God has revealed His word so we can know Him, not just know about Him.
- Choose life, friends.
𝗝𝗼𝗶𝗻 𝗺𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗕𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝗻 𝗮𝘁 12 𝗽𝗺 𝗘𝗧.
Day #344: Deuteronomy 29-30
𝒱𝑒𝓇𝓈𝑒 𝑜𝒻 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝒟𝒶𝓎: Deuteronomy 29:29
“The hidden things belong to the Lord our God, but the revealed things belong to us and our children forever, so that we may follow all the words of this law.”
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