Are you flailing or flourishing? Sometimes it’s hard to tell. The Scriptures warn against flailing, and give clear direction towards flourishing. Moses exhorted the people of Israel:

The Lord commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God, for our good always, that he might preserve us alive, as we are this day.

The statutes of the Lord, the commands and directions found in the Bible are for our good always. Popular thinking considers the Bible restrictive, the ways of living revealed within as harmful, even evil if applied rigidly. Bashing the directives found in Scripture gets an easy high-five.

But what if those public commentators have it wrong? What if they don’t understand the end results of their philosophies? What if the path to human flourishing doesn’t follow an inner voice, but instead follows the mandates of God? What if the ten commandments and the morality of Moses and the teachings of Jesus form the soil from which vibrant living springs?

The one guaranteed formula for a life you will look back upon with satisfaction is found in the ways of the Lord as described in the Bible. The canon of scripture is indeed restrictive—you cannot do anything you want and follow Jesus—but leads to our flourishing.

For our good always makes for a guarantee that’s hard to ignore.

Deuteronomy 6 in Through the Bible in 2024

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦