You shall make no covenant with them and their gods. ³³ They shall not dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against me; for if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.”

Exodus 23:32-33

Daddy God, You long for communion with me.  Your heart is to be in fellowship with me.  To be with me.  Thank you, Daddy!  Thank you that you want me.  That’s all you’ve ever wanted.  That’s all you ever longed for.  From the very beginning, in the Garden, you longed to be with us, to walk and talk with the people that you made.  And since then, your biggest desire is to restore us to the place you meant for us all along.

No wonder you want us to make no provision in our lives for false gods.  You’ve seen how easily tempted away from goodness we are.  From the very beginning you’ve seen it and made away around it for us.  But it came at a price, God.  For Adam and Eve, their disobedience led to separation from you.  And my disobedience has led to separation from you.  The price to bring us back to you had to be complete.  It had to be forever.  For our sake and for yours, the price to bring us back to you and have unity with you had to be once and for all.  Otherwise we would stumble and fall over and over and over again forever.

From the beginning you just asked us to listen to you, to trust you and accept that you knew what was best for us, but like disobedient children we convince ourselves that we know what’s best.  I’m sorry, Daddy.  I’m sorry for not trusting you.  I’m sorry that I’ve used flawed logic to make allowances for myself to do things that just brought me separation from you and brought pain to me.  From the beginning your requests have been simple, and in my disobedience I’ve made things hard.  I’m no different than the Israelites.  You told them to trust you and they needed more.  You gave them a handful of basic truths to follow to have a happy life, and they couldn’t listen.  They needed more.  You gave them specific examples and they still couldn’t do it.  They still needed more.  You told them to utterly destroy the things that would tempt them away from happy lives living with you as their protector and friend, and they couldn’t do it.  They needed more.

They needed more.  Wanted more.

I needed more and wanted more.

But Jesus is enough.

I don’t need more, Daddy.  Jesus is enough for me.  Your Presence in my heart is enough.  No more slavery to rules of obligation.  No more struggling to figure things out for myself.  I trust you enough to know that you aren’t going to lead me the wrong way.  You’re not going to hurt me.  Your not going to enslave me.  You are going to give me joy and peace and love.  Those are GOOD things.  Very good things.  You have conquered completely the snares of sin and death.  You have utterly destroyed the chains of bondage and subjugation that those things would have given me.  You took the consequence of bad decisions on yourself so that I could finally be with you and be happy.  And you gave me your Spirit, so I could feel you and know you and trust you when the enemy comes to tempt me.

So, I’m yours, God.  I’m yours.  Thank you for your love.  A love that has overcome all things that would hurt me so that I could live and be happy with you.  Just like you wanted all along.

⁸ Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. ⁹ For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” ¹⁰ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.

¹¹ Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. ¹² The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. ¹³ Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. ¹⁴ But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

Romans 13:8-14