C-L-I-N-G

Clinging To The Lord Your God

“You are to cling to the Lord your God.“ – These were Joshua’s parting words to wayward Israel, just before his death.

Be ye therefore very courageous to keep and to do all that is written in the book of the law of Moses, that ye turn not aside therefrom to the right hand or to the left;  (Joshua 23:8)

CLING : “To hold fast to something, as by grasping, sticking, embracing, or winding around“.

As a wet raincoat would CLING to your back.

As a person on the verge of death would CLING to life.

CLING: “To remain attached in thought or practice“.

CLING: “To follow close after, pursue hard; to resist separation“.

Jesus put it this way:  And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. (Luke 9:23)

CLINGING conveys the sense of desperation: That there is no other viable option.

QUESTION: ARE WE CLINGING TO CHRIST? Or to:

* Our bank account?

* Our reputation?

* Our own capabilities?

* Our friends?

* Our social status?

SELF SUFFICIENCY is the arrogant assumption that we can go it alone… without God.

CLINGING is the humble acknowledgment that we must be intimately connected to God for life to make sense and to be worth living.

In Joshua’s admonition to CLING to God he gives this warning:

“If you ever go back and CLING to the rest of these nations (I.e. The world and its values)… (they) shall be to you as: A snare and a trap… A whip on your sides… Thorns in your eyes.

Know for a certainty that the LORD your God will no more drive out any of these nations from before you; but they shall be snares and traps unto you, and scourges in your sides, and thorns in your eyes, until ye perish from off this good land which the LORD your God hath given you. (Joshua 23:13)

QUESTION: Are we CLINGING to Christ? Or do we have it so together that we can go it alone? If so, are we willing to pay the price of independence?

Pastor Woody