For He Is Your Life.

“… love the LORD your God, obey him, and remain faithful to him. For he is your life,…” – Deuteronomy 30.20, CSB

Moses stood before the people whom he had led for some 40 years, knowing that his time as their leader and shepherd was coming to a close. Moses stood just outside the beloved Promised Land that God was going to give to the people of Israel. He longed to go in but was not allowed. The book of Deuteronomy is a written record of Moses’s opportunity to remind the people of what was most important before he left them. And as he came to the close of his grandfatherly advice and warnings, he said this:

“I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, love the LORD your God, obey him, and remain faithful to him. For he is your life, and he will prolong your days as you live in the land the LORD swore to give to your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” – Deuteronomy 30.19-20, emphasis added

Moses reminded the people of Israel who the source of life was. He didn’t instruct them to make lives for themselves. Instead, he pointed them to the source of all life and called them to love and obey him. He called them to love God and to live with him, not in spaces that were left over after all they had to do and wanted to experience. No. He called them to life with God as the source of their very being. Paul even reminded the Christians in Colossae of this very thing when he said, “When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory” (Colossians 3.4, emphasis added). 

Life is not found first in the memories we make or the accomplishments we achieve. It doesn’t start with the adventures that we create and experience. Instead, life is first chosen. It’s a deliberate choice we must make. And the choice to live life is first found in loving God, obeying him, and remaining faithful to him. Jesus would refer to this in John 15 as “abiding in him.” Jesus told his disciples, “As the Father has loved me, I have also loved you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commands you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love” (John 15.9-10, CSB).

Friends, allow me the gracious honor to remind us of this very same thing. With as many voices vying for our attention and devotion, let’s choose life. Let’s always abide in Jesus because he is our life. He is never a cute addition to the lives that we’ve made, fitting into the nooks and crannies of our overly burdened and time-depleted days. Instead, he is supposed to be the preeminence of what makes up life for us. And we get to love and obey him, forever abiding in his limitless and relentless love for us.