{"id":4356,"date":"2022-11-06T06:31:18","date_gmt":"2022-11-06T12:31:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nazareneblogs.org\/pastorscott\/?p=4356"},"modified":"2022-11-06T06:31:18","modified_gmt":"2022-11-06T12:31:18","slug":"devotional-on-deuteronomy-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/devotional-on-deuteronomy-13\/","title":{"rendered":"Devotional on Deuteronomy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure style=\"width: 1600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/-G6VNOK7VhUw\/XWmmoXUX6KI\/AAAAAAABAyY\/aa5CGulAu1ErHEzeLrr0zMWe3VVPHRsrgCKgBGAs\/s1600\/PHOTO_20140708_152604.jpg\" width=\"1600\" height=\"902\" class=\"size-large\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">2014 &#8211; Pacific City, OR<\/figcaption><\/figure><br \/>\nA humbling reminder<br \/>\nDeuteronomy 7: God wasn&#8217;t attracted to you\u2026because you were big and important\u2026he did it out of sheer love.<br \/>\nIt&#8217;s a bit humbling.  Moses is talking to the &#8220;chosen people&#8221; who are about to enter the &#8220;promised land.&#8221;  Everything about this causes them to think of themselves as being somehow special.  But Moses says &#8220;no&#8221; to this kind of thinking.  Frankly, this shouldn&#8217;t be too hard.   Their ancestors for ten generations were mere slaves in Egypt.  Their parents were nomads without a land to call their own.  Moses says to them, &#8220;You aren&#8217;t special \u2013 it\u2019s God&#8217;s love that\u2019s special.&#8221;  Well, that&#8217;s kind of what he says, but the other side of this coin is that because God loved them and treasured them &#8212; because of that, they are special.  As I read these words I find myself, rather than being a somewhat interested bystander, right at the heart of this story.  I was on the outside looking in, unworthy and unwelcome.  Then, I received an invitation to come in.  That invitation was signed in blood, the signature: \u201cJesus Christ.\u201d  Now, I read these ancient words of Moses with new eyes and with a whole new level of respect.  God wasn\u2019t attracted to me because I was big and important.  In sheer love he reached out to me.  Today, I\u2019m humbled by this reminder.<br \/>\nTake Away: I am who I am by the grace of God.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A humbling reminder Deuteronomy 7: God wasn&#8217;t attracted to you\u2026because you were big and important\u2026he did it out of sheer love. It&#8217;s a bit humbling. Moses is talking to the &#8220;chosen people&#8221; who are about to enter the &#8220;promised land.&#8221; Everything about this causes them to think of themselves as being somehow special. But Moses [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1489,7],"tags":[121,423,473,518,713],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4356"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4356"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14021,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4356\/revisions\/14021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}