MONITE MA’ASI 2, 2026

TEUTALONOME 8-10; 2 TIMOTE 2:8-10

Of all the things your mind needs to remember, nothing is more important than remembering God.

‘I he kotoa ‘o e ngaahi me’a ‘oku fiema’u ke ke manatu’i, ‘oku ‘ikai mo ha toe me’a ‘e mahu’inga ange, ka ko ho’o MANATU’I ‘A E ‘OTUA.

It was the morning of my first job. I was sixteen years old and very nervous. If you had asked me, I'm not sure I could have remembered my name. My dad had filled me with all kinds of advice about how to work, how to relate to my fellow workers, and how to relate to my bosses. I was clueless as to what I was facing, because I had never had a real job before. As I was about to leave my house, dad stopped me and said, "Remember who you are representing." He didn't mean himself, or our family. No, he was reminding me that I represented the Lord. He had saved that bit of advice for last, because he wanted me to drive to my newfound world of work with this paramount issue in mind.

Of all the many laws God gave to his children, the commandment to remember him was perhaps the most important. If he was not at the center of all they thought, desired, said, and did, then they would not live in a way that pleased him, and their forgetful hearts would be susceptible to the allure of the idols of the nations around them. So Moses instructed the people:

Take care lest you forget the LORD your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes, which I command you today, lest, when you have eaten and are full and have built good houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks multiply and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, then your heart be lifted up, and you forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 

(Deut. 8:11-14)

Do everything you can not to forget me.

Do everything you can not to forget how I brought you out of slavery.

Do everything you can not to forget how I gave you my law.

Do everything you can not to forget how I chose to dwell in your midst.

Do everything you can not to forget how I sustained you in the wilderness.

Do everything you can to remember me.

When we are walking through the wilderness of life, feeling weak and dependent, we tend to remember and cry out to the Lord. But as Deuteronomy 8 warns, it is in seasons of comfort and ease that our minds become forgetful and our hearts begin to wander. May God give us the grace to remember our Lord and the magnitude of how he continues to bless us in his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And in remembering, may we worship and serve him with joy.

 SAPATE MA’ASI 1, 2026

TEUTALONOME 5-7; SAAME 1:1-6

God's commands are wisdom-drenched gifts of divine love. It would be foolish to resist their protecting and directing beauty.

Ko e ngaahi fekau ‘a e ‘Otua, ko e ngaahi me’a’ofa ‘oku anuanu ‘i he poto faka-’Otua. ‘Oku ‘ikai totonu ke tau si’aki ‘a e masani mo e malu’i ‘oku nau ‘omi ki he’etau mo’ui.

God did not give his law as a means of gaining his acceptance; his standard is too lofty, too holy. No, God's law was a gift to those he had already chosen to love, so that they would know how to live and, in following his commands, thrive. That's why the psalmist can exult, "Oh how I love your law!" (Ps. 119:97). The words that follow are my celebration of the gift of God's commands and the grace that empowers us to love and keep them.

God's law is perfect, holy, righteous, good. It is God's gracious, loving, wise, tender welcome to the good life, where sinful impulses are restrained, where we are protected from our wandering hearts, where we learn to live as our Creator designed us to live. God's protective boundaries, the fences of his law, are an expression of his love. These laws have been given not to earn his love, but as a gift of grace to those he has chosen to love. In an ever-changing world-valleys deep, mountains high, woods dark, enemies abounding, temptations whispering - there is security in God's unchanging law. 

There simply is nothing to add to his holy and righteous commands. Who would've thought, who could've ever conceived, who had the wisdom to design such a plan, such purpose, such a moral structure for human help, hope, thriving? It's an act of arrogance, confusion, rebellion, foolishness to subtract things from God's holy and loving moral plan for us. 

So settle in, believe that God always knows what is best, and pray for grace to surrender your thoughts, desires, choices, words, actions, to him.