delight... not just duty

Only be very careful to observe the commandment and the law that Moses the servant of the Lord commanded you, to love the Lord your God, and to walk in all his ways and to keep his commandments and to cling to him and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul.

Joshua 22:5

Loving God is loving and keeping His commands... at least as far as Joshua is concerned. You cannot love God and simultaneously decide to live contrary to His revealed Law. It doesn't jive. I like the way Joshua weaves love with devotion, delight with duty, heart's affection with obedience, and the soul with service. It can truly be no other way.

Religion is usually just about either knowing stuff or routinely doing stuff. But relationship with God is about the heart loving God and then following hard after what God has revealed. It is not blindly yielding to slavish demands. It is about the delight of the soul in the love of God. In observing the Law, the children of Israel were to love God, cling to Him, and serve Him from heart and soul.

That admonition speaks to my heart. I too am called to obey my Lord and Savior. But it must come in love of Him, not in blind rote ritual and not because of any intellectual assent alone. My heart must seek God and love Him first above all else. Even my own life cannot be my first concern. It is an enormous delight that my soul craves above any other thing.