Do you have children who are obedient to you? How does that make you feel? Are you pleased with them? How about when they are disobedient, how do you feel? I cannot answer these questions because I have no children. Let me share with you what I learned about how obedience brings hope.
This is not going to be a blog about condemning disobedience but rather about the blessings of being obedient. I am not going to point a finger at anyone and call them disobedient. I am going to let God and the reader do their own pointing. I have found in my many years of being a Christian that there seems to be a lot of fruit inspectors. That is people who look at others and say they can or cannot be a Christian because they are or are not obedient. The problem I have with that is that I do not know or understand where the person is coming from. Is a person a brand-new Christian who came out of using drugs and still struggles with not using. Maybe they used for the first time in 3 months because they slipped, which is a great stride forward from where they were when six months ago, they used 3 or 4 times a day every day. See given that I would say there was great fruit.
I have found that God wants me to be obedient. He sets a very high standard when it comes to being obedient. The standard is Himself and His Son Jesus. “For I am the Lord who brought you up from the land of Egypt to be your God; thus you shall be holy, for I am holy.” Leviticus 11:45 (ESV) and 1 Peter 1 15-16, “but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.’” (ESV). So, since I am commanded to be holy but in practice I am not. What am I to do? The answer is following God’s plan for mankind. I am to seek forgiveness from God by accepting Jesus as my Lord and Savior.
When I follow God’s plan then everything changes. I become positionally holy because my sins have been wiped away as far as the east is from the west. Psalms 103:12, “as far as the east is from the west,
so far does he remove our transgressions from us.” (ESV) Peter tells us also that we have become holy through accepting Jesus. “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” 1Peter 2:9 (ESV) So even though I still disobey God, because of Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection and my acceptance I am now positionally holy. That brings me hope.
I pray you that you will join me in being obedient to God’s commands not because we have to but because we want to because we love God. When we are obedient to Him, we are walking and living in His blessings and in the hope of things to come. The first step of obedience is for you to seek Jesus for He is the only opportunity there is to have eternal life. This is to me the greatest source of hope. In doing so, I believe we will have hope and joy in our everyday lives. Understanding how Jesus Christ grants us access to eternal life, allows us to live in hope. “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” John 17:3 (ESV) At the same time understanding you will live eternally knowing the only true God and Jesus Christ will also bring you the greatest hope. Because of the death of Jesus Christ on the cross, all of our sins were satisfied and the penalty for them was paid. His payment satisfies all my sins from the past, the present and in the future. My penalty and yours was satisfied on the cross by the death of Jesus, God’s greatest act of love and wrath, who became sin for me and you. It was also God’s greatest act of faithfulness because “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8 (ESV) Because holiness shows us, we need to believe in Jesus. I hope that you join me in helping others to choose Jesus.
If you have not read my previous blogs, you can find them here. You can watch a book trailer about my book. You can find my book, Hope Amid Hopelessness: Our Abba Father Provides a Way Through Mental Illness here. eBook or Audiobook versions can be found at Westbow Press or Christianbook.com at Amazon or Google.
I mentioned that I was going through a difficult time right now. If you are interested in what I am going through, you can read about it here.
