So I read Leviticus 26 this morning.  I am not sure If I have never read it or it just has hit me differently than ever before.  But I joke you not as I was reading this I began to have this feeling, I guess the best way to describe it is a holy fear of God, and I began to tear up at the thought of what that looks like now, and how if God is still the same yesterday today and forever and He can not change than this characteristic is still true for today.  I got nervous and scared and awed, and this chapter just really hit home with discipline and obedience for me.  This whole chapter, this whole punishment was brought on by disobedience.  And I guess  the reason I think it was a holy fear as opposed to just fear is because I understand the underline meaning in what God is doing.  God punishes His children 6 different times, but what that means to me is He doesn’t go straight to death for their disobedience and pride (19 I will break your proud spirit by making the skies as unyielding as iron and the earth as hard as bronze).  There is this unspoken grace of God that gives them one more chance, and then another one and another one, and He continues to make it worse and worse for them with the understanding if you will stop with your prideful ways repent and change this whole thing ends and I will live with you and speak to you (But in spite of their behavior, while they are among their enemies I won’t reject or abhor or destroy them completely. I won’t break my covenant with them: I am God, their God. For their sake I will remember the covenant with their ancestors whom I, with all the nations watching, brought out of Egypt in order to be their God. I am God.” )  6 different times He allows them to end this punishment and yet doesn’t because He loves them enough to give them more chances and emphasize , by the means of increasing punishment, His love over them by not taking them straight to death by the hands of their enemy.  As I began to look at this chapter and my own life I got a real gut check on things that I don’t honor God with, things that I have not revered like God talks about in the beginning of this chapter (14-17 “But if you refuse to obey me and won’t observe my commandments, despising my decrees and holding my laws in contempt by your disobedience, making a shambles of my covenant, I’ll step in and pour on the trouble:)  This was just a good time for me to remember who He is and what He will do if I just obey, and then what He will do if I choose not to.  It was a good reminder and appropriate for this time going into this start up of this thing we are doing, and just reminding me and giving me this reverence for Him this morning as I sat and pondered what He said. 

Dad my heart is obedience and humility.  Help me break my pride and  continue to show me the disobedient places in my life that I may repent and change my ways not for the sake of the punishment but because I dont think I could not live without you or have you speak to me.  Father pour out your grace over me today.