“GOD HAS CHOSEN YOU!”

Deuteronomy 7:1-6                               (ESV)

“1 "When the LORD your GOD brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than you,

2 and when the LORD your GOD gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then YOU MUST DEVOTE THEM TO COMPLETE DESTRUCTION. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them.

3 You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons,

4 for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods. Then THE ANGER OF THE LORD would be kindled against you, and HE WOULD DESTROY YOU quickly.

5 But thus shall you deal with them: you shall break down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and chop down their Asherim and burn their carved images with fire.

6 "For you are a people Holy to the LORD your GOD. The LORD your “GOD HAS CHOSEN YOU” to be a people for HIS TREASURED POSSESSION, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.”

The song “GOD IS IN CONTROL” (Twila Paris 1993) might give you the impression that GOD is kind of like banks of a river, steering a stream where HE can be best Glorified?  However, ALMIGHTY GOD not only guides our actions, HE orchestrates circumstances surrounding us so HIS Plan will be fulfilled.  Admitting that we are simple humans who are being used for HIS Glory, not living out our dreams of how “we think” our future should go, is paramount in our happiness.  Regardless of what we think and how we act, we don’t have the POWER to control our present, much less our future!

Isaiah 42:5 says in part “Thus says GOD,....WHO gives breath to the people on it and Spirit to those who walk in it:...”.  When HE decides to stop giving us breath, continuing to live will become extremely difficult.  So when unscrupulous world leaders (Pharaoh, Julius Caesar, Pol Pot, Hitler, or any other despot), or nations such as “..the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites”, they are being used to Glorify my GOD, even though we may not be able to SEE it from where we are.   

Not being the Spiritual Giant that some are, it is sometimes difficult for me to SEE the Spiritual Warfare that is transpiring all around me.  But that doesn’t mean that ALMIGHTY GOD is hamstrung by my immaturity, only that I don’t PRAISE and celebrate HIM enough for what HE has done for me.  To grasp that “GOD HAS CHOSEN YOU” for a specific reason and work confounds me to no ends!  Why would our CREATOR CHOOSE ME, out of ALL HIS CREATION, to serve HIM?  It has to be that I am part of HIS PLAN, not because I am worthy?

“GOD HAS CHOSEN YOU” when HE selected me to do HIS work, even when I am “filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6 KJV) in HIS sight!  We will never be WORTHY of serving HIM until we have Glorified bodies (1 Corinthians 15:53) when we graduate to immortality.  Until then I will perform the tasks HE has assigned me, especially when it offends “this world”!  But I am happy that the same “GOD WHO IS IN CONTROL” is the “GOD WHO HAS CHOSEN YOU” to be used by HIM for HIS GLORY!!!