All the Time

"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”—Deuteronomy 6:4-9

What does God want from me? The short answer is: everything. God wants your heart, and if we give our hearts to Him, then like a locomotive pulling freight cars, everything else in our lives will follow suit. We will want to worship Him, learn more about Him, tell others about Him, and live lives that demonstrate how valuable He is to us.

In our passage for today, we have the Jewish motto/anthem known as the Shema, from the Hebrew word “Hear.” The Shema showed Israel’s unique identity as followers of the one true God, as well as the discipline and actions necessary to maintain that identity. God is THE only God in the entire universe, and our response to Him should be one of sweet surrender and absolute devotion. We are to love Him with all of our heart, soul and might. One way this love is seen and communicated is through comprehensive and thorough instruction. We love God by teaching others to do the same.

After announcing that God is the only God, the author of Deuteronomy helps us see how we are to respond to Him. He begins by saying that the words of God, or commands, are to be upon their hearts (v. 6). And once they are upon their hearts, they are to intentionally communicate the words of God to the next generation. When? Where? How? The Bible gives us an answer: By talking about them when we are at home, around the dinner table, watching a movie, playing a game, working in the yard, doing the dishes, doing laundry, picking out clothes—as well as a million and one other activities that we have to do each and every day. We have plenty of opportunities to talk to our families about Christ. Whether it is our parents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, or children and grandchildren—we must simply do it. We don’t have to be in church to talk about Christ, any more than we have to be in the White House to talk about politics. Our love for God is to be the dominant theme of our life that flows out of every pore of our being. We are to teach when we are walking along the way, or driving the car to the grocery store, or to the mall. We talk about God when we get ready for bed at night and when we get up in the morning. Everything in life is an opportunity for us to shed the spotlight on God, for everything we see and enjoy all points back to Him.

In verse 8 we see how far God wants us to take our passion for Him and His word. He says,  

“You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” 

Many Jews took this verse literally, meaning they constructed small boxes with copies of these verses in them (known as phylacteries) and then attached them with a leather strap and bound it to their hands, head, or to their doorposts with a small object known as a mezuzah. While their zeal and devotion are commendable, a better and perhaps more accurate understanding of these verses is that we should be thinking about God when we work with our hands and when we think with our minds and when we are at home and away from home—in other words, all the time. God wants us to think about Him, because when we do, we are showing how much we love Him, how much we value Him. May others see this devotion in us, so that God may be glorified. Amen.