Is your lack of OBEDIENCE the ROOT of your DELAY?
Obedience is one of the key principles to living the holy life Christ has called us to walk. Without it, it’s impossible to please God. An obedient heart posture drives us to strive for the life we know will glorify the father. It creates a desire to do what we know is pleasing to him. If we only understood how much our life’s trajectory depended on obedience we’d view its importance much differently.
Many Christians today ignore the call of obedience due to a lack of reverence and fear of the Lord. When we live with reverence for God we have respect not only for him, but also for the things he cares about. What’s pleasing to him becomes our primary focus. Having a healthy (holy) fear of God always draws us closer to him. This type of fear is not designed to scare us and make us avoidant the way we usually think of fear. Without reverence we lack fear, which ultimately leads to a lack of obedience.
The topic of obedience is so important because it is often the direct link to why we feel behind in life. It is why we don’t see God moving in our lives as he is in the lives of others. We’ve become watered down by the world refusing to accept that our delay or denial is tied to our own disobedience. We refuse to ask the hard questions like what in my life has caused this delay? Has me having no regard for the Lord caused me to miss out? Has putting my own self interest over the interest of God caused me to lose his favor? Don’t get me wrong, I’m a firm believer that sometimes where we are in life is for a greater purpose and I believe we serve a Lord of grace and restoration, however much of our feeling as though we have a lackluster life is due to our own selfishness and refusal to obey Christ.
Obedience looks like choosing to do what God says even when it doesn’t make sense. Obeying what he’s telling you to do right away instead of getting around to it. Obeying him when we don’t feel like it. Obeying him entirely instead of doing only half of what he’s instructed you to do. It’s time that we start honoring our Savior like the King that he is! Trusting that he knows what’s best and that his instruction always serves a purpose even when we don’t understand it.
I want to encourage anyone who’s reading this to ponder on what areas of your life have you not been obedient and what the current state of your life looks like because of it. I encourage you to ask God to give you a heart of true repentance and ask for his grace to empower you to obey his will for your life. I’ll be praying for you and ask you do the same for me!
Scriptures to encourage obedience
Isaiah 1:19 - If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land.
Luke 6:46 - “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?
2 Corinthians 10:5 - We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
John 14:15 - If you love me, keep my commands.
Luke 11:28 - He replied, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it.”