We Belong to God

Deuteronomy 8:7-18

⁷ because the LORD your God is bringing you to a wonderful land, a land with streams of water, springs, and wells that gush up in the valleys and on the hills; ⁸ a land of wheat and barley, vines, fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of olive oil and honey; ⁹ a land where you will eat food without any shortage—you won’t lack a thing there—a land where stone is hard as iron and where you will mine copper from the hills. ¹⁰ You will eat, you will be satisfied, and you will bless the LORD your God in the wonderful land that he’s given you. ¹¹ But watch yourself! Don’t forget the LORD your God by not keeping his commands or his case laws or his regulations that I am commanding you right now. ¹² When you eat, get full, build nice houses, and settle down, ¹³ and when your herds and your flocks are growing large, your silver and gold are multiplying, and everything you have is thriving, ¹⁴ don’t become arrogant, forgetting the LORD your God: the one who rescued you from Egypt, from the house of slavery; ¹⁵ the one who led you through this vast and terrifying desert of poisonous snakes and scorpions, of cracked ground with no water; the one who made water flow for you out of a hard rock; ¹⁶ the one who fed you manna in the wilderness, which your ancestors had never experienced, in order to humble and test you, but in order to do good to you in the end. ¹⁷ Don’t think to yourself, My own strength and abilities have produced all this prosperity for me. ¹⁸ Remember the LORD your God! He’s the one who gives you the strength to be prosperous in order to establish the covenant he made with your ancestors—and that’s how things stand right now.