SPEAKER: Christina Okechukwu
TOPIC: Obedience
BIBLE TEXT-: Mark 12:30-31 NLT
And you must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.””
Mark 12:30-31 NLT
This is a topic that has been heavy on my heart for the past couple of years and God has led me to speak on it today. I share as one who is not above any of you but as one whom God is currently dealing with in this topic.
I believe we will be refreshed and recharged tonight.
I will be sharing as the Spirit leads on the subject of Obedience
As per Dictionary.com…
- Obedience is defined as compliance with an order, request, or law or submission to another’s authority.
- Compliance is conforming , submitting, or adapting (as to a regulation or to another’s wishes) as required or requested.
- Conforming is to comply with rules, standards, or laws
- Submission is the act of accepting or yielding to a superior force or to the will or authority of another person.
- Yield is to give way to arguments, demands, or pressure
- Accepting means to receive
- Adapting means to modify, alter, change
I just want us to have a clear understanding of the word Obedience
So I ask this question:
Who is the ultimate authority or superior force we are to Obey?
As Christians what are the rules, standards, demands or laws we are complying with, submitting to, yielding to, accepting and conforming to?
So I start with this scripture
And you must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.””
Mark 12:30-31 NLT
This may be a review for us but let’s follow along...
So we see here that the two greatest commandments in the Word are to
1. Love God and 2. Love Others
Let’s keep that in mind as we proceed...
So let’s look at the word Obedience
I do not think it’s a coincidence that right in the middle of the word Obedience is the word *Die*
So we can say that Obedience is the **willingness to die to your own will, submitting to that of one more powerful**
So in essence death is at the center of obedience to God-
-death to the flesh for us
-in the case of Jesus- death
on a cross.
And let’s not forget martyr Stephen- death by stoning.
We can go on and on, but there just seems to be a cost to obedience that requires some form of death.
Let’s take this scripture:
“he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross.”
- Philippians 2:8 NLT
“He” is referring to Jesus
It says he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross
- Here we see how obedience and death went hand in hand in the person of Jesus.
- We may or may not experience what he did, but understand that obedience to Christ will require something of you.
So we’ve defined Obedience, now we move on to what should be the foundation of our Obedience to Christ.
Let’s look at the following scriptures:
-John 14:15 (NLT)
- ““If you love me, obey my commandments.”
2 John 1:6 (NLT)
- “Love means doing what God has commanded us, and he has commanded us to love one another, just as you heard from the beginning.”
That’s it 🙌... Love us what should drive us to do what God instructs is to do.
- In order to follow God’s commands and live a life of total obedience to God, we have to know Him first. It’d be hard to obey someone we do not know, trust or have a relationship with. What they say, we’d probably let it go through one ear and out the other. Or if we do comply with what they say, it may not be from a place of love.
Let’s go deeper, it’d be hard to genuinely obey someone you do not have love for…(let that sink)
- When we know God, we know love and receive love to show back to God and to others. That love is expressed and brought to light in our doing what God says and in our submitting to others whether they’re of the faith or not.
- We should not obey God out of the Spirit of Fear but out of the Spirit of Love which is the basis of a Reverential Fear we should have of God.
We know what Obedience is, what we are to obey and what the foundation of it should be....
Why though is it sometimes difficult to Obey?
Many of us can agree that sometimes it is not easy to obey what God is telling us to do/or what he has already told us to do in His Word
I use myself as an example and maybe some of us can relate: Honestly when I have issues obeying I see that it’s because I have issues loving.
What I mean is...when my love for God is compromised or when another ‘god ‘has taken His place on the throne of my heart (self, pride, gifts, social media, etc) it’s hard to love Him….and when it’s hard to love him, it’s hard to do what he asks of me (it feels like a burden)…and furthermore, I would find it hard to love other people.
Another reason I sometimes find it difficult to obey is Fear of doing what I’m asked to do.
I’d ask questions like: God, what if this happens? God ,I don’t think I can do it, God what if they reject me? God, what will others think of me? God, that’s too hard? and the list goes on and on
Let’s take Moses for example:
- “Now go, for I am sending you to Pharaoh. You must lead my people Israel out of Egypt.”
- Exodus 3:10 NLT
- But Moses protested, “If I go to the people of Israel and tell them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ they will ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what should I tell them?””
- Exodus 3:13 NLT
If we read chapters 3 and 4 we see the many excuses Moses gave for why he was not the right candidate for what God wanted to do
Sounds like us doesn’t it?
Yes, alright let’s move on to the consequences of disobedience...I hope we are learning something 🙏
Just as obedience is a choice, disobedience is also a choice. There is no such thing as ‘I accidentally disobeyed’. Let that sink…
- As per Merriam Webster, disobedience is defined as:
- Refusal or neglect to obey
- Defiance
- Rebellion
- Insubordination
- In relation to our study today, it can be defined as not doing what God asked us to do when he said it- no matter how big or small the task may appear.
Let’s look at Deuteronomy 28:15
“But if you refuse to listen to the Lord your God and do not obey all the commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come and overwhelm you:”
Deuteronomy 28:15 through the end thoroughly delineated various curses that would come upon the children of Israel if they did not obey God’s commands.
Yes Lord have mercy.
The children of Israel would experience confusion, loss, fear, dread, sickness, disease, death etc. if they did not obey.
- When I find myself in situations where I am operating in disobedience I do not have peace in my heart, I am confused, and I am fearful and down. It’s not a pleasant feeling. Things just do not go right….I feel off. Can any one relate?
- And most importantly I feel convicted. That conviction is a sign that I need to confess my disobedience to God.
- I am thankful for the Holy Spirit who always lets us know when we are in the wrong
Let’s look at this scripture...
“But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.”
1 John 1:9 NLT
To go against what God has said is to sin against Him.
It separates us from God.
We should acknowledge and confront our disobedience and not ignore it,
We should confess our sin and ask for God to forgive us and to give us the grace to obey Him.
It’s His grace that enables us to do the things he tells us to do.
If we go back to the account of Moses’ call
He told God to send someone else to speak
God got angry with him, but in the end Moses still had to speak regardless…
He still had to obey because God’s word needed to come forth.
- When we think of Jonah, God gave him a message, he disobeyed and went elsewhere eventually to fall into all sorts of chaos due to his disobedience.
However, God had a word for the people that needed to be released. God still used Jonah.
Jonah could have died in that big fish
God could have said’ Forget you Moses, I will choose another, but He didn’t.
I pray we can grab a hold of this ...
**When God gives us opportunities to try again, let us humble ourselves and do it. He does not have to but he does it.
We don’t deserve other chances but he gives us. Let this be encouragement to obey the first time and not abuse his grace.
God surely is merciful towards us
Let’s move on to the final point...
The Blessings of Obedience
- Think back to the last instruction from God gave you that you obeyed wholeheartedly, without rebelling.
- How did it feel?
- For one, I had peace..like God and I were on the same page.
That is how it should always feel
Let’s look at this scripture:
“If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully keep all his commands that I am giving you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the world.”
- Deuteronomy 28:1 NLT
We always refer to these blessings in prayers and man these are powerful blessings! (Verses 1-14)
And for the children of Israel these blessings were all hinged upon them obeying the Lord.
I believe that it is the same for us in 2019. Don’t get me wrong, for us who are in Christ, we have already been blessed with every spiritual blessing as it states in Ephesians 1:3
- “All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ.”
- But God has a way of rewarding us with things that are the result of steps of obedience we take everyday.
In closing I will say this:
If only we could see life from God’s perspective.
If only we could know God more and know his ways.
If only we could let go of fear and rebellion.
Would we see that God does not ask us do things to embarrass, intimidate, hurt, or ridicule us. He does so because he loves us and needs his purpose to be fulfilled through you.
Listen, even the winds 💨 and the waves 💦 obey Him…I had to pause when I received this...Nature responds to Him. How much more us…the ones He has created in His image and in His likeness. Let’s outdo nature. God deserves more of our commitment and devotion.
It all starts with us coming to Christ and it continues on a daily basis with us dying to our will, wants and desires, and yielding to God.
Both obedience and disobedience are costly $. Would you rather pay the price of obedience which leads to life or that of disobedience which unfortunately leads to death.
So what is it that lately we’ve not been obeying:
Fasting?
Sharing the gospel?
Letting go of a relationship?
Let’s ask God for forgiveness in the areas of our rebellion and receive his grace to obey.
Let’s end with this picture in our minds
I’ve seen a picture of a father figure asking his daughter to give him a teddy bear she was holding in her hands. It looked like she did not want to give it to him. Meanwhile, the father was holding a bigger teddy bear behind his back that his daughter could not see.
Isn’t that how God operates? We rebel and cry and fuss and complain over what he asks us to do , not knowing that he may have a huge blessing in store for us.
There’s so much he wants to do in and through us that are hinged on our Obedience.
It is my prayer that we obey like never before.
He doesn’t want to harm us.
He loves us and knows what he’s doing