Hosanna Restoration Church

I suppose the most commonly referred to scripture on the subject of obedience is found in 1 Samuel, when Samuel tells Saul that it is better to obey than to sacrifice. In this instance, Saul was making sacrifices to God when he was not qualified. He was performing a religious activity. Religious activity never impresses God. The condition of our hearts is what moves Him. He wants us to be obedient.

Have you ever noticed that we often consider obeying in itself to be a sacrifice. We want our own way, don’t we? In this scripture from the gospel of John, Jesus sheds another light on the subject of obedience. He equates obedience, or keeping His commands, to love. In other words, if we love God, we will obey God.

The other day, God put a couple of old testament passages on my heart. Whenever He does this, I go to them and read them, and search them, assuming there is some special revelation there for me. After reading them a couple of times, and pondering them, I said, “okay Lord talk to me, explain what it is you want me to see here.” He responded saying, “the revelation was not the important thing, the obedience was!” He continued to explain that, sometimes people can get great revelation, but fail to obey. Eventually they use the fact that they are still receiving revelation and experiencing success, to overcome the conviction they feel for not obeying. This of course leads to disaster. We need to be ware if we are experiencing blessing when we know we need to draw closer to God and yet we are neglecting to do what He wants us too.

After this, I felt rather foolish. First, I apologized to God for expecting that there had to be something extra special there for me. Every Word of God is extra special. The great blessing is that He would put it on my heart in the first place. That God would care to communicate with me at all is quite enough. Don’t get me wrong, I still want great revelation, but I should be just as excited about simple conversation. After all, He is God.

I was also led to realize that obedience is much easier when the relationship is what it should be. When we are close to someone, it becomes important to do what they want. We spend time looking for things that will please them. When we move into this place with God, we will search the Word to see what we can do to please Him each day. We may read something like, “love your enemies,” and we will know that God wants us to forgive and love someone that we have not be forgiving or loving.

So many people think they can obey what they want, but find that obedience without the love just does not last. Obedience without love, is like the law. No one could keep all of it. Only Jesus could. And if we will let Him, by the power of the Holy Spirit, He will lead us all into the same relationship with the Father, that He had. We can do it!