How will you answer someone who asks you what it means to walk with the Lord? Deuteronomy 10:12-22 is a good place to start. We are to give God our whole heart. Jesus said the same, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37).  

Recently I was speaking at a women’s conference where girls as young as ten years old attended. One of these young girls approached me after the conference was over and asked me a good question, What does it mean to walk with the Lord? I answered as succinctly as I could. We read our Bible. We pray. We go to church on Sunday. We love God and enjoy our relationship with Him. We trust God and we obey Him.

But I could have also taken her to Deuteronomy 10:12-22 to answer her question. The beginning of the passage asks a very important question, “And now Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you” (Deut. 10:12)? In other words, How should God’s people live in light of His electing love and gracious redemption? Or, What does the Lord, who has redeemed them, require of them? The passage goes on to answer the question. Israel is “to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the LORD” (vv. 12-13).

Such requirements are for the good of God’s people. The Creator of heaven and earth could have chosen any people upon whom to set His heart in love, but He chose Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and their offspring to love. Israel was to respond to such love by circumcising the foreskin of their heart. Remember, circumcision was the sign of the Abrahamic covenant (see Gen. 17:1-14). The outward act of circumcision was always meant to symbolize an inward spiritual reality (see also Jer. 4:4; Rom. 2:25-29). God’s people were to turn away from stubbornness of heart toward the great, mighty and awesome God. Far from the gods of Egypt and Canaan, the one, living and true God, executes justice for the orphan and widow, loves and provides for the sojourner, and expects His chosen, redeemed people to do the same (see also Deut. 24:17-22). After all, Israel knew what life was like as a sojourner in Egypt. They were never to lose sight of how that felt when they lived in the land of promise. Instead, such remembrance was to prompt them to love those in the same situation.

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