OBEDIENCE IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE

      Greetings in the name of Jesus:


      We have been talking about prayer for the last few blogs, and it is probably more important than most things we could discuss with the exception of one thing, and that is our obedience to Christ.  It is the one thing that God has concentrated on more so than anything else, the obedience to His word through the power of the Holy Spirit.

  Jesus refers to Himself as the vine, and us as the branches.  That means that we must abide in His will and word for our lives.  We abide in Him and He abides in us through the power of the Holy Spirit. John 15:4 calls for us to be one with God.  This is the only way that we can be fruitful in the Spirit. If we are truly obedient to Christ we should be walking in the same manner as Christ walked.  John 14:21 tells us that the only way we can really tell if someone loves God is to be obedient to God.  It is this idea that I want to follow for a bit in this blog because in today's world there is a constant pressure to try to balance our obedience with the amount of faith we have.  That has brought forth the discussion about what is more important; faith or obedience?  In truth, these two things are only centered in our love for Christ.

  We all have physical laws that govern our lives while we live this life, and there are spiritual laws that should begin to govern our Spiritual lives.  Having a good balance in these areas is what will make us free. Our obedience to Christ allows us to have what Christ calls an abundant life John 10:10.

  Our obedience to Christ takes practice on our part because just like an athlete in training we must build up our spiritual life. We cannot produce Spiritual fruit unless we are grafted into Christ and being pumped His life flowing through our veins 1 John 2:6 and 15-17.  No matter how we look at our life eternally we must be tied into Christ if we are to have the power to even live our lives for God for if we do not we will be overcome by this world. Fortunately, "greater is He who is in me than he who is in this world". I truly believe that our ability to be obedient to Christ is tied directly to how much we really love Him.

  There are a couple of examples of what I mean by that statement; 1 is King Saul found in
1 Samuel 15: in simply not obeying God's command to Him through Samuel. 2. Is Pauls type of obedience to Christ after he had been knocked off of his horse on the Damascus road.  Saul who was later named Paul was on fire for God or at least he thought he was, but found out that he was not following God's plan Acts 9:1-22.  God will show us what His will is for our lives, not the other way around.  After Paul understood what Christ meant by true obedience to God he found out what things he should suffer as he proclaimed Christ to an unbelieving world.  We are getting into an area of great importance with regard to obedience and personal purity.  The idea of setting ourselves aside for God instead of for ourselves is the beginning of a Holy life, which God has said many different times and ways should be a goal; " Be ye Holy as I am Holy" we need to become as living sacrifices " Holy" acceptable to God which is our reasonable service.  Let your prayers turn toward obedience to God's will in your life.  May you richly bless God through your life in Him.



THE UNWORTHY SERVANT