03/08/2023
Whether we are young or older, the answer to keeping ourselves pure is the same: live according to God's word. Sounds so simple, so why is it so hard to do? Jesus summed up God's word in one word: Love! That's why it's so hard. All we need to do is love God, love one another, and love ourselves. The first of the commandments call us to love God. We are not to put anything or anyone above God. We are not to take God's name in vain by using it as a curse or an exclamation of anything other than praise. We are not to take God's role in condemning anyone or anything. It belongs only to God to decide if someone will be damned and sent to hell, not to us. We are to take time out of our week to give thanks and praise to God. The rest of the commandments speak about our responsibilities to others. As we learned from reading Scripture, our allegiance to authority only goes so far. We are not to follow immoral rules. When I think of the horrors of the holocaust, I can't believe how many people turned in their neighbors because of their religious beliefs! Hi**er, in his determination to kill the Jewish people, would have killed Jesus with less compunction than Pilate who at least considered him innocent. We are told not to kill the spirit of a person as well as not to kill or harm his body. We are told to keep ourselves out of harm's way; not to put ourselves in dangerous situations without a good reason, and not to use people for our own pleasure; to treat others with the same respect we want them to show us. We are not to lie or cheat or steal, but to be satisfied with the blessings we have been given. If we do these things, we will be pure in the eyes of the Lord.
