Simple Spiritual Guidelines

One of my favorite go-to bloggers and spiritual leaders online is Brent Riggs. Today, in his Facebook post, also on his website, he discussed obeying God. I took a few of his comments to heart. It made me begin thinking about why most of us find obeying God's laws a little difficult.

Most people of faith realize we are supposed to obey God in all things. However, if we are realistic, we also realize that we are human and prone to resistance to his laws and prone to willfulness and other all-too-human failings. It was that way even in the early days where we see God's chosen people resisting and disobeying over and over again. What we also see is God's forgiveness, as well as his punishments.

That said, I don't want Him to toss a plague of locusts at me, or fill my water pipes with frogs, so I do try (most of the time) to be a reasonably good person. That takes a lot of work. I realize that theoretically, it should be easier to be good than to be bad. I wonder how good must I be to be "good" and how bad can I be before being "bad"?

Suddenly it occurred to me that God gave us the simplest set of rules to follow: His Ten Commandments. How much easier can it be? But I don't follow them all, all the time.

I was raised Catholic and once had a discussion with a co-worker who said that as an adult, she doesn't bother with confession any longer because she doesn't really do anything bad. "What could I tell the priest, that I lied?" she asked. And my reply was, "Well, yes, if you lied, that's what you would tell him." The thing is, we all forget in our adult years that a lie is truly against the Ten Commandments. And a little "white lie" for what we think is a good reason is still a lie. 

We each look at each of the ten and we tend to adapt them to suit our own sensibilities and convenience.

I should print the Ten and put them in a nice font and into a frame on the wall somewhere in the house. Come to think of it, I should have them plastered all over the house because I do find it easy to get distracted by the world and its issues.

Lord Jesus, I realize you did not break any of the commandments, so you gave us yourself and your life as a wonderful example to follow. But I am not you and I often get distracted and do not even realize I am not obeying. I am grateful the Father forgives me over and over, but I would like to think I making some headway in the battle. Please send me all the grace you can so that I can try to be more obedient to the Father's guidelines for our life here on earth.