The Lord will make you the head, not the tail. If you pay attention to the commands of the Lord your God that I give you this day and carefully follow them, you will always be at the top, never at the bottom (Deuteronomy 28:13 NIV).
This a favorite verse of many modern-day preachers. People are also happy to hear that God intends to make them the head and not the tail. That is all fine. Yet there is one small word here that is often not preached: “IF.”
God is willing to bless and prosper you. But wherever the Bible speaks about blessing it talks about a condition starting with “IF.” God wants us to focus on what we are supposed to do. If we do our part then only God is free to act out His part of the promise.
If we do not act according to His commands then because of the condition “IF” God has placed, He cannot bless us. So it is we who decide whether we qualify to receive God’s blessing on our lives.
Any other kind of teaching that focuses attention only on God’s part in blessing us is a deception. Do not believe such lies and live in misery.
The first step to qualify for God’s blessing is to pay careful attention to the commands of the Lord. That means you have a personal responsibility to study the Bible and learn for yourselves firsthand from it what God wants to teach you.
So many times we rely on our friends or preachers to do the study of the Bible. We then live by what they say to us. But their opinions can be surely colored by their own experiences. So pay attention to God’s Word on your own.
The second step proceeds naturally from the first step. Here many fail. Just appreciating the truth of the Bible is not enough. You have to make it relevant to daily life by following what it teaches. It is by obeying that you climb from the bottom to the top.
It is impossible for that to happen for any man in one flash. God does not do it that way. It happens always STEP by STEP! Remember “IF.”
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