No more excuses

Deuteronomy 30:11-20

¹¹"This command I am giving you today is not too difficult for you to understand or perform. ¹²It is not up in heaven, so distant that you must ask, `Who will go to heaven and bring it down so we can hear and obey it?' <sup>13</sup>It is not beyond the sea, so far away that you must ask, `Who will cross the sea to bring it to us so we can hear and obey it?' ¹⁴The message is very close at hand; it is on your lips and in your heart so that you can obey it.

¹⁵"Now listen! Today I am giving you a choice between prosperity and disaster, between life and death. ¹⁶I have commanded you today to love the LORD your God and to keep his commands, laws, and regulations by walking in his ways. If you do this, you will live and become a great nation, and the LORD your God will bless you and the land you are about to enter and occupy. ¹⁷But if your heart turns away and you refuse to listen, and if you are drawn away to serve and worship other gods, ¹⁸then I warn you now that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live a long, good life in the land you are crossing the Jordan to occupy.

¹⁹"Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life, that you and your descendants might live! ²⁰Choose to love the LORD your God and to obey him and commit yourself to him, for he is your life. Then you will live long in the land the LORD swore to give your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob."

Quotes to Consider:

In its deepest nature and meaning our universe is a community of boundless and totally competent love.
~Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy (11)

Jesus offers himself as God's doorway into the life that is truly life. Confidence in him leads us to become his apprentices in eternal living. "Those who come through me will be safe," he said. "They will go in and out and find all they need. I have come into their world that they may have life, and life to the limit."
But intelligent, effectual entry into this life is currently obstructed by clouds of well-intentioned misinformation. The "gospels" that predominate where he is most frequently invoked speak only of preparing to die or else of correcting social practices and conditions. These are both important, but neither one touches the quick of individual existence or taps the depth of the reality of Christ. Our usual "gospels" are, in effect, nothing less than a standing invitation to omit God from the course of our daily existence.
Does Jesus only enable me to "make the cut" when I die? Or to know how to protest, or howto vote or agitate and organize? It is good to know that when I die all will be well, but is there any good news for life? If I had to choose, I would rather have a car that runs than good insurance on one that doesn't. Can I not have both?

And what social or political arrangements - however important in their own right - can guide and empower me to be the person I know I ought to be? Can anyone now seriously believe that if people are only permitted or enabled to do what they want, they will then be happy or more disposed to do what is right?
~Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy (12)

The drive to signifcance that first appears as a vital need in the tiny child, and later as its clamorous desire for attention, is not egotism. Egotistical individuals see everything through themselves. They are always the dominant figures in their own field of vision.
Egotism is pathological self-obsession, a reaction to anxiety about whether one really does count. It is a form of acut self-conciousness and can be prevented and healed only by the experience of being adequately loved. It is, indeed, a desperate response to frustration of the need we all have to count for something and be held to be irreplaceable, without price.
Unlike egotism, the drive to significance is a simple extension of the creative impulse of God that gave us being. It is not filtered through self-conciousness any more than is our lunge to catch a package falling from someone's hand. It is outwardly directed to the good to be done. We were built to count, as water is made to run downhill. We are placed in a specific context to count in ways no one else does. That is our destiny.
Our hunger for significance is a signal of who we are and why we are here, and it also is the basis of humanity's enduring response to Jesus. For he always takes individual human beings as seriously as their shredded dignity demands, and he has the resources to carry through with his high estimate of them.
~Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy, (15)