Look, it's simple. God orchestrated 66 books in what we now know as the Bible with instructions and examples. This was not done without purpose. It is directions for us to OBEY! God speaks to us for a reason and that's not just for His own pleasure. If God didn't want us to obey Him then He wouldn't ask anything of us. Then our faith would be the equivalent of many other religions - convenient. Love requires obedience.
In my life this is a huge area where I have lacked in the past and it continues in the present. I'm not gonna sit here and type this stupid blog and pretend that I'm obedient. I'm not. But I want to be and I'm trying to be. I realize that the more obedient I am the more that I feel close to God and the more I feel blessed by God.
Here's the trick though: Obey God, not man. Now what I mean by this is I believe that God is speaking to each and every one of us in an individual way. Obey THAT voice and find THAT voice. Too often all of these other people tell us what we should and should not do. Well, that's fine and dandy and it is very truth that God can speak to us through others but learn God's voice for yourself and follow it and OBEY it.
If you love God then you must obey Him. It's pretty much that simple.
6 comments:
What do you think about Galatians 3:22 coupled with Deut 31:24-29 where moses basically says the israelites would not obey it? We are talking a lot about justification by faith. Galatians 3. The idea I get from it is that obedience is good, but the blessing of God can be obtained only through faith not by our own obedience?
Josh, those are some great points. Truthfully, I'm not really sure how it all works out.
As far as justification by faith goes that is absolutely correct. We will always fall short of God's standards in our life when we try to attain it on our own. Salvation can only happen through faith in Jesus Christ.
I guess I was looking at it from a different perspective, doesn't mean I was 100% right by any means, and that perspective was one after salvation. I think God still speaks to us through His Word and through prayer, etc and it is necessary for us to follow that. I simply believe that remains to be an aspect of us showing God our love.
I think that comment was actually longer than the original post lol!
I might have been a little off topic. I was just simply going off what I happened to be teaching about tonight, so I wanted to throw it at you and see what you thought.
Hawkeyes on Sat. I can't wait.
Josh, I thought about it some more. I think this might be a good illustration. Let's just say you had a daughter and let's just say her name was Alora (I love that name, by the way). She's 16 and wants to go hang out with some friends, some guys, some girls. Do you let her?
Regardless of anything, she's knows that you are her father. But that doesn't necessarily change how she acts.
If she is consistently challenging your authority and disobeying what you say you are probably less likely to let her go hang out with her friends.
If she is always doing what you ask and honoring your relationship with her as father then you are probably more likely to let her go.
I'm wondering if God is the same way and maybe that we should look at Him in this light.
Food for thought.
In that illustration it is my daughters goodness that is allowing her to do what she is doing. It is her work, her obedience. We should be obedient to God, but the blessing of obedience is found in the faith that we have behind why we are obedient. In tithing we give not because we have to, we are blessed not because the minister told us we were, we are blessed because our faith believes that when we have faith to believe that what we are giving makes a difference in the Kingdom. It is our faith that believes that God is who He says He is and will do what He says he will do. Faith in Christ is what makes us right with him, not works or our goodness. I think I just went off on a tangent, but I think you get my point?
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