Whenever I hear or read the words “Obey God,” I have this “achy” feeling. My chest trembles. My mind worries. My heart cries.
Obeying God is never easy. In this world we live in where we are bombarded with influences that will pull us away from God, I doubt if one could say that’s it’s easy to obey God. But let’s talk about it. For once, let’s talk about Obedience to God.
Why do we need to Obey God?
My answer to this is short. Because He is God. If we obey our parents, our bosses, or anyone superior to us, how much more our God?
How do we Obey God?
The best answer to this is to have a relationship with Him. It’s logic. You won’t obey someone you don’t trust. And for you to trust someone, you must know that someone, there must be a connection. The same way with God. If we have a relationship with Him, obeying Him will be our first nature. We will be mindful of how we live our lives because we know we have a God to obey.
But what are the practical ways to do to strengthen your desire to obey God?
Read His Word
Reading and understanding the Bible will give us direction and clarity. We do not hear Him audibly. We do not see Him face to face. But we have the Bible that bears all His message to His beloved yesterday, today, and forever. The Bible is God’s love letters to us. Reading and understanding it is like listening and talking to Him.
Pray and Talk to Him
It’s not enough to read and understand the Bible. Whatever you’ve discovered, it’s best to supplement it with prayer. If reading the Bible is God speaking to us, praying is us speaking to God. We need not lengthy prayers; but prayers that is coming from our innermost being. Prayers coming from our hearts. Pray as if you’re talking to your friend, to your Father, to someone so close that you are excited to tell all.
Act and Live in Obedience
Reading the Bible without prayer is just studying without taking to heart whatever you’re reading. Praying without action is like planting without watering it. Prayer without action is pointless. So we need to take that into mind. Whatever we’ve read, whatever we’ve prayed for, we need to act on it. Acting does not mean taking things into our own hands. To act is to activate our faith knowing that God will be in control and we just live our lives trusting Him whatever comes our way.
What prevents us from obeying God then?
The world will do. We need to remember that we live in a fallen world. The is the devil’s avenue to steal our faith. The devil, our greatest enemy will deceive us and will do his best to prevent us from obeying God. 3 things he will do:
Limitation
He will remind us of our limitations. He will remind us that we can’t obey God because of the fallen nature we have. But it’s true. We are limited. We have lots of limitations. But our God isn’t. So instead of listening to the lies of the enemy, let’s turn to God. Accept your limited nature and lift up your everything to God.
Manipulation
The devil will manipulate, abuse, blemish our minds telling us we don’t have what it takes. That we are nothing, no one, in the eyes of God so why obey? He will manipulate our mind to do otherwise. To take things within our hands and go on with our lives the way we want it. Again, the antidote to this is to accept that yes we don’t have what it takes but our God has it. Our God loves us so much that He will give what we need to be able to obey Him. You see, God wants us to obey Him and He will help us do it.
Intimidation
The devil will consistently shout that we will never succeed in obeying God. We will always fall short. We will always fail. But you know what? Let that intimidation be the key to lift up and entrust everything to God. After all, it’s true. We will always fall short. We will fail. But failing isn’t the end. Failures may be part of our walk of faith, but may these failures activate our faith all the more and fire us up to obey Him more. We fall down, we stand up. We fall down again, we stand up again.
So, obey God. Period.
By his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. We have received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself by means of his marvelous glory and excellence. -2 Peter 1:3 (NLT)-
Remember this, God already knows we will fail. God already knows we will have a difficult time obeying Him. God knows our limitations. God knows we can’t. And because of that, He gave Jesus to us. To break the wall between Him and us.
Then He prepared everything. He make sure we will be able to live a Godly life even if it’s difficult. There’s nothing we can do to make all these happen except for one thing: To believe in Jesus. Believing in Jesus means having faith and trusting Him that we will be able to pull through.
Obeying God may be difficult but trust that God has prepared a triumphant life for you, me, and everyone who will believe.
Yes, obedience to God isn’t easy, but it’s worth it.
