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I grew up with a father who exercised authority in a way that I knew I better obey, or else! Being a kid I thought it was all about Dad telling me what to do.\u00a0 Isn\u2019t that what all kids think?\u00a0 Then I went to school and teachers told me what to do.\u00a0 If I didn\u2019t obey I was toast.<\/p>\n
When I was sixteen I got my first job and guess what?\u00a0 I had a boss that I better obey or I would be fired and it\u2019s been that way ever since.\u00a0 Do your job, do it well, or you will SUFFER the consequences!\u00a0 Let\u2019s just say that I didn\u2019t have a healthy view of obedience.<\/p>\n
To most people obedience is a negative thing.\u00a0 I know it was to me.\u00a0 In 1973, I was born-again, baptized, and joined a church.\u00a0 Over time I was taught that I needed to fear God and obey Him or else He would punish me.\u00a0 I swallowed that teaching hook, line, and sinker because it matched what I always believed about authority.\u00a0 Therefore, I went through most of my Christian life fearing God and trying to obey Him.\u00a0 When I messed up I expected God to deal with me accordingly.\u00a0 After all, God is God!\u00a0 He is the Supreme Being and I better not tangle with Him or else.<\/p>\n
Sometimes bad stuff would happen in my life and I thought I must have done something to tick God off so He was punishing me.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t sure what I did, but God is always right so I tried to straighten up even more.\u00a0 I begged God for mercy.\u00a0 I begged God to hear my cry.\u00a0 I prayed for forgiveness over and over.\u00a0 I did everything I could to appease this awesome and fearful God.\u00a0 After all, didn\u2019t the Bible say that is it a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Hebrews 10:31)?<\/p>\n
Whenever I read verses about obeying God I would inwardly cringe.\u00a0 I\u2019d rather skipped over that part of His promises.\u00a0 I loved the actual promise, but I didn\u2019t like the obey part.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because I had a wrong view of obedience.\u00a0 Some derivative of the word obey is used 176 times in the Bible.\u00a0 Even Jesus said the we must keep His commandments (obey).\u00a0 All of this seemed like a Master-slave relationship to me.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t fight it, but I didn\u2019t understand it either.\u00a0 Why did this whole obedience thing leave a bad taste in my mouth?<\/p>\n
The Bible is filled with stories of the consequences of disobedience.\u00a0 Look what happened to Adam!\u00a0 He disobeyed God just one time and that sent all mankind into a downward spiral of turmoil.\u00a0 This obey stuff is serious!\u00a0 Don\u2019t mess with God!<\/p>\n
Finally, one day as I was meditating on God\u2019s Word, I considered the word \u201cobey.\u201d The Lord spoke to me the most amazing thing, \u201cSon, obedience isn\u2019t for me, it\u2019s FOR you.\u201d\u00a0 What?\u00a0 That was a foreign thought!\u00a0 Obedience was FOR me.<\/p>\n
Father went on to show me that He is good and that His supreme desire toward me and for me was only good.\u00a0 Therefore, what He instructed me to do was FOR my good<\/u>.\u00a0 Obedience isn\u2019t for God to take an ego trip.\u00a0 HE doesn\u2019t need my obedience, I DO!\u00a0 Did you get that?\u00a0 God doesn\u2019t need our obedience, we do!<\/p>\n
Obedience to God\u2019s instructions leads us down the right paths (Proverbs 3:6).\u00a0 Since He knows what\u2019s ahead and how to get us to where we WANT to go, He desires that we obey Him.\u00a0 When we obey Him He will lead us to where WE WANT TO GO!\u00a0 He WANTS to give us the desires of OUR heart (Psalm 37:4).\u00a0 He DELIGHTS in OUR prosperity (Psalm 35:27).\u00a0 He doesn\u2019t want us to obey Him for<\/em> Him.\u00a0 He wants us to obey Him FOR us.\u00a0 He wants us to obey Him so that He CAN bless us.\u00a0 How can He bless us if we make wrong choices and do stupid stuff?<\/p>\n If left to our own devices we will end up sick, tired, broke, and dead.\u00a0 He on the other hand sent Jesus so that we can have life and have it in ABUNDANCE (John 10:10).\u00a0 Even salvation through Jesus isn\u2019t for God, it\u2019s for us.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t get me wrong, God gets something out of our obedience.\u00a0 He gets blessed kids who are an exhibition His glory.\u00a0 We get blessed and God gets glory.\u00a0 Now that\u2019s a good deal, don\u2019t you think?\u00a0 So, all this time when I cringed at obedience I was cringing at the perfect OPPORTUNITY for God to bless me.<\/p>\n Today, I have a fresh REVELATION of obedience.\u00a0 The truth of God\u2019s word on obedience was forever imprinted into my heart and now I can say, \u201cI love to obey!\u201d\u00a0 I love the word obedience.\u00a0 Our obedience to God is the precursor to blessing<\/strong>.\u00a0 Without obedience, we are on our own, and that, at least for me, has been a disaster!\u00a0 I can\u2019t see into the future, but God can.\u00a0 He has a perfect plan for me to live long and prosper.\u00a0 He has the same plan for you.\u00a0 For us to succeed we must trust the Lord with all our heart and not rely on our own understanding (Proverbs 3:5).\u00a0 As we trust and obey He leads us down the RIGHT paths.\u00a0 We then live prosperous and extraordinary lives.<\/p>\n Did you know through obedience to the Holy Spirit He will guide you into all truth and show you things to come<\/u>.\u00a0 Just imagine living a life of missing all the traps Satan has set to destroy you?\u00a0 We can live the good life through obedience to the Holy Spirit.\u00a0 That, my friend, is an amazing thing!<\/p>\n Today I will leave you with this promise:<\/p>\n \u201cYou must carefully follow every command the Lord is giving you TODAY, so that you may LIVE, and INCREASE, and ENTER, and TAKE POSSESSION of all the promises God has given to you.\u201d\u00a0 I have paraphrased this from Deuteronomy 8:1. From this verse we can see the BENEFITS of obeying God.\u00a0 Always remember for the rest of your lives that obedience is not for God, it is for you.\u00a0 God doesn\u2019t need your obedience to satisfy His ego.\u00a0 You need obedience to open the floodgates of blessing upon your life.<\/p>\n I hope you enjoyed this word.\u00a0 The revelation that God has given me regarding obedience has forever changed my fallen view of what it means to obey.\u00a0 I no longer have a Master-slave relationship with God.\u00a0 Rather I am His son, in partnership with Him.\u00a0 He, as the Holy Spirit, is my counselor to guide me down the right paths as I obey His instruction to live the blessed life.\u00a0 God is eager to do the same for you!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Lord spoke to me the most amazing thing, \u201cSon, obedience isn\u2019t for me, it\u2019s FOR you.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15975,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,202],"tags":[415,416,418,414,412,417,286,413,411],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sendoutyourroots.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15974"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sendoutyourroots.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sendoutyourroots.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sendoutyourroots.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sendoutyourroots.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sendoutyourroots.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sendoutyourroots.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sendoutyourroots.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sendoutyourroots.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sendoutyourroots.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}