His Commandments Are Not Burdensome

When I was young my father did me the favor of shooting me straight. He never said straight up "your brother is just better than you", he just let me know that if I wanted to beat Brian (my brother) I had to work hard at improving my game. I wanted to have the glory of defeating my brother in anything so the hard work wasn't burdensome at all, I loved it. Shooting jumpers in the rain, tossing up rocks to myself and hitting them into the canyon with my bat (standard issue from SF Giants bat-day), or even jumping over stacked bags of leaves like it was the goaline. It didn't matter I was working!
When I got to college the work was a lot harder, sometimes miserable but not entirely burdensome and I look back on it now with fond memories, I'd love to go back and grind it out all over again just because. When I think of anything hard I ever did I don't look back at the grind I look at the accomplishment. Can you all relate?

Let's look at young Jacob describe his grind (being a servant) that his uncle Laban made him endure just so he could call Rachel (Labans daugther) his bride.
Genesis 31:40 "There I was! In the day the drought consumed me, and the frost by night, and my sleep departed from my eyes."
But yet Jacob looked back in retrospect in this way.
Genesis 29:20 "So Jacob served seven years for Rachel and they seemed only a few days to him because of the love he had for her."

Man... Do we love our wives/girlfriends like that? I'm not sure I can say that I do on a consistent basis, and I'm ashamed to say it because I know I love sports 24/7. But let's throw off spouses and sports and ask ourselves if we love Jesus enough to work for Him? Mind you works will not get you a ticket to the show (see last weeks post for explaination). Mix in a little obedience here and a little reading there and we're good right? No! That's not gonna get it to where we need it to be to experience His awesome power. We need to surrender the whole sandwich, not just cut off a chunk and be like "here you go JC get yourself a bite of that" and think He's pleased! Our God is not mocked, you reap what you sow.... period (Gal 6:7)! I'm so tired of my own "B" team mentality, "I'm doing good enough", do you know any champions who went to work satisfied? Man, I don't know I just got fired up on this, let me go put some ice on my neck for a minute.
Now to finish my point, God's commandments (instructions in the bible on how to live) should not be teeth nashing for us to do, we should do it out of love and desire to feel that Holy Spirit tickle our skin again like it did that one time... God wants to give more to us, more peace, more perspective, more love, more laughter, more excitement and yes even more pain. We can't get any of this if we don't grow and the way to grow is to live in obedience and follow His word, cherish His word because He wrote it for us. It's His love letter! I loved Blakes e-outreach email where he asked if we cherish His word. Let's fall in love with the Savior again and experience more of what He has for us.

Father; forgive us of our sinful ways and help us to understand that we are forgiven. Help us to dig our feet in and live this life 100% for you. We need you! In Jesus name we pray, Amen.

Thanks for tuning in, I appreciate you guys.