So you’re fueled up, you’ve got your torches burning… how in the heck do you begin to put this Bold Faith into action? How do you pull all of these ideas into a single set of ideals that will drive your life? Good questions… I have the answer.

Our culture has taken the following ideals and ripped them into parts and it has been happening for centuries. Why do we feel the need to modify perfection? I guarantee that if you follow these next 10 ideals and make them a solid part of who you are… you will find strength that no man can take away. You will find strength that evil will grow weary trying to attack. You will find strength that will compel you to stand up… stand firm… and Live Bold.

God gave his 10 commands to the Jewish nation when they were being freed from a generation of slavery. As His people set out toward their new land… they were lawless. The children were raised with foreign culture that did not believe in the one true God. So God set for them 10 basic commands that would govern their nation and give them hope, guidance, and strength.

Understand this… 10 commands for a nation. If God was complicated, wouldn’t he have given us 10,000 commands that we couldn’t possibly follow? In fact… the people later started interpreting God’s law and changing it. They began adding grey lines instead of solid black and white lines.

God’s 10 commands are not only for the jewish nation, but for you and I today.  These work.
I am going to put these 10 commands into words we can both understand:

1)  Don’t have any gods before God.
- Meaning: Anything you put first before your faith is a god to you. Do you worship money, sex, career, etc?

2) Don’t make idols in the form of anything on the earth, in the sky, on the ground, under the ground, or in the water. If you bow to them God will remember your disobedience and attach it to your children, their children, their children, and their children. But God will remember your keeping of this command through your 1000th generation.
- Meaning: Don’t fixate your life around any tangible thing and use it to worship. God only deserves worship because He made everything. Disobeying this command has deep ramifications.

3) Don’t use God’s name wrong. God will not find anyone innocent who misuses his name.
- Meaning: Don’t curse or damn anyone in God’s name… you aren’t God.

4) Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. For six days you will work, but the seventh day is reserved for rest and a day to give honor to God. No work for you, your children, your employees, your animals, or strangers in your town.
- Meaning: Take a day to rest and honor God. Give your family a rest. ( What day is your Sabbath?)

5) Honor your father and mother.
- Meaning: Respect the life of the people that gave you life. Without them, you would not be here. Honoring them doesn’t always mean obeying them. If your mother or father abused you… you still honor them by living God’s plan for your life.

6) Don’t murder anyone.
- Meaning: Murder is more malicious than killing. God is telling us that in order to murder, our hearts have to be overtaken with darkness.

7) Don’t commit adultery.
- Meaning: If you are married, if they are married, hands off and eyes off anyone other than your spouse. If you can’t stay faithful, why did you marry them in the first place? If things are going bad, work it out.

8 ) Don’t steal.
- Meaning: If it doesn’t belong to you, don’t take it. ( Do you steal time from your employer?)

9) Don’t falsely accuse your neighbor.
- Meaning:  Don’t convict someone else in order to do them harm, elevate yourself, or get status or position. (Have you ever lied to keep someone in trouble that “deserved it”? Have you ever carried forward the gossip that implicates someone that you have no knowledge of?)

10) Don’t desire other people’s possessions, wives, or husbands as if they should be yours.
- Meaning: Be satisfied with what you have and how God has provided for you. The lust for more stuff is not of God and takes your focus off of God.

That’s it. Can you do this? Personally, I think it’s very doable and it’s given me strength beyond what I thought I was capable of. It helps me blow away all of the crap that religious people throw at you. If you look through the Bible, you will see that the stories, the teachings, and the ideals all tie back in to these 10 basic commands.

What you have to remember more than the words that are offered is that each command deals with a condition of your heart. You can say that you don’t murder anyone, but if you truly wish and hope for someone to die and that hate drives you… you are just as guilty.

The bottom line is that you’ve got to get control of your mind and your heart. You have to internalize each of these and honestly attempt to convert your way of living to these ideals.

God is so incredibly more amazing than we are. We are humans, and we mess up. I find it awesome that God knows this about us and said, “Here’s 10 things I want you to do with your life. Do these things and you will know Me.”

At every point in history, groups have come along and weighted down these 10 commands with all kinds of junk that are man-made. Then they convict you when you don’t abide by their rules. Religion is wonderful at creating obstacles to God… for some religions… more complications is job security (That’s what the Pharisees did in Jesus’ time).

How do you take these and make them who you are? Mind Control. I’ll tell you more in the next entry.

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(You are reading the blog series by Live Bold. This is a living, unedited book being written in the wide open. Follow along. If you’re getting here late, go back to the archives under the LB NOW category and start reading. Each entry is numbered in sequence. Comments are welcome and some will end up in the final published book. May God’s hand be in all we do here at Live Bold.)
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