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Lead Like Moses Devotional 40

by David Joynt on July 21, 2022


EXODUS 20:12 | 12 Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

The ten commandments make visible and measurable greatness accessible to everyone. Talent, effort, fortune, and social capital tend to determine success in social and economic terms and variables in these factors inevitably result in inequality. But moral and spiritual greatness are equally possible for everyone.

Examine the ten commandments and notice the realms of excellence applied in them. One command stresses our capacity for honesty, another our focus on promise-keeping. Commands cover resources, relationships, and ambition. Today’s verse focuses on family life. The home itself can be an area of moral and spiritual excellence, of obedience and flourishing.

Can you see the breadth of the commands?

Think not so much about what they forbid as what they
encourage.

Tags: encourage, commands, breadth

About the Author
David Joynt

Dave Joynt began his service as a pastor at Valley Presbyterian Church in Paradise Valley, Arizona in September 2014. This meant a move away from the Northeast, where he has a long history, growing up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and then serving congregations in Delaware and New Jersey for a total of 23 years.

Dave was nurtured in a great church in Bethlehem where his parents, Anne and Carey, served as elders. He graduated in classics from Lehigh University where his Father taught, and then from Oxford, where he met his wife Julia. Ordained in 1988, he completed a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1993.

He and Julia have a son, Tristan, and a daughter, Madeleine.

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