31 Days of Devotion, Day 4 by Mark Jordan

Daily Reading: Deuteronomy 10:17-22

What jumps out to you from today’s passage as it pertains to one’s identity? We see in Scripture how God’s identity can be summed up in one word: LOVE. God loves us first and calls us to live a life of love in response. Love must be our animating force. As we learned yesterday, we are to love God with everything we have and are, as well as love neighbor as we love self.

In today’s passage, we see how Moses ran through some categories that might have surprised people at the time: widows, orphans, and foreigners. The big idea here is how one might identify. The patriarch of the family was the essential connecting point to society in biblical times, so a widow or orphaned child suffered a lost identity. Similarly, there was a call to show love to foreigners who were out of place. In both cases, God wants to be the common connection point for everyone.

God does not want your identity or sense of significance to come from a last name or passport. God is our heavenly Father who loves us and wants us to be known by how we love. We, then, participate in the Lord’s rescue mission for humanity by helping all those who feel like outsiders know that in Christ we are adopted into God’s forever family.I hope you will consider how you identify with God today. We need to connect to the Lord as He moves us from physical and spiritual foreigners to part of His forever family.

As we do, we will find that those who also connect to God are sojourning in salvation as well. So, let’s make love our animating force and fuel for that journey, shall we?

Daily Prayer
Dear God, give me eyes to see my own identity in Christ. Open me up to the ast and the least and the lost around me. Help me to remember your special concern for those who are weak and taken for granted. Show me how I can serve them. Amen.