Obedience

To be filled with the Holy Spirit is to be filled with the love of the Father. A love that sees the stranger, even your enemy, as you would your own children, and such love always says the right thing and does the right thing. The act of such love always surpasses mere obedience to commands.

Do you know that the less Christians are filled with the love of God, the Spirit of God, the more they emphasize obedience over love, and ministries that emphasize obedience over love will see little wrong in using guilt and shame to try and motivate Christians into obedience?

To them, it doesn't matter what you use to get the result as long as you get the resulting obedience to God. But what if the Father's desired result for our lives is more excellent than Obedience to God?

What if he wanted more for us than for our lives to reveal our obedience? What if he wanted our lives to reveal his love? That's not an either-or situation; obedience is a fundamental aspect of the Life of Christ. His obedience took him to death, a death for us. But his love for us was not born out of his obedience; it was the other way around. The root or the source of his obedience was his love, which is his very nature.

God's plan was not to send Christ to live an exemplary life that we now have to try and imitate through obedience. God never had a plan to save the world through our obedience. His plan was to save the world through his love. His plan was to get his love, which you remember is his very nature into us by pouring into our hearts his very Spirit, his very life, so that man and woman are filled with the love of God.

Obedience was never something that we bring to God as if we have made it ourselves. The only obedience that pleases God is that which his love has birthed in our lives. Obedience that is of the Spirit is the gift of God. Obedience is not about willpower but about a will empowered by the Spirit of God. It's not something we do ourselves.

The obedience of the religious in Jesus' Day Led only to Pride and division. That's why it's not good enough to try and scare people into the kingdom of God with the threat of hell. Any life birthed out of the fear of rejection will never lead to the character of Christ. It was that sort of Obedience to God that persecuted and then crucified Christ.

Any religion that is blind to what Christ accomplished on the cross will always ask for your obedience in a way that implies that your obedience will bring you closer to God.

Here's the gospel believer in Christ, you cannot get closer to God, for through Christ you died, and your life now is hidden with Christ and God. What can get closer is your thinking in your mind; in the renewing of your mind.

The Obedience of God in our lives is the work of His Spirit, his nature, and his love in our hearts from which obedience is birthed. Obedience is only pleasing to God if his love is the source.

1 Corinthians 13:13 But now faith, hope, and love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Courtesy of Pastor Phelim Doherty
@ Righteous Reminders!