Rhemalight

Obedience

In the Kingdom of God, obedience is not optional but a must. When you became the child of the most high God, you changed masters or Lords. Jesus became the Lord of your life and satan is no longer the master so allegiance changes. Let me even add this-you are not the lord of your life either. The life you live is no longer your own but it belongs to God. Paul writing to Galatians in Galatians 2:20 says, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me…” It is Christ who has the absolute authority over your life. You are not your master but a servant of God. You can’t just do anything you want. You have to align your will to His will as a soldier who receives orders-which he obeys-from the commanding officer.

Obedience is the word translated from the Greek word “Hupakoe” which means compliance or submission. The Hebrew word translated obey refers to hearing, listening and obeying. Obedience has to do with hearing when your commander calls, listening attentively (Proverbs 4) to His words and making sure you understand, and then submitting your will to His will. It is important that you align your will with God’s will because when you got saved, you didn’t lose the ability to make decisions. However, you have to make sure that the decisions you make are influenced by what the Lord has said. Therefore, you can’t separate obedience to listening to the leading of the Lord.

Different Lordship

In our fallen nature, we used to do whatever we wanted. Of course we were often times influenced by the devil but didn’t know any better (Ephesians 2:1-4). When we got saved, many of us still don’t want to submit/comply to our master’s orders. However, our master is not a hard taskmaster who forces his way on us. He calls upon us to come and reason together with Him. In order to reason with Him, you need to understand his terms. When you take time to feed on His word and pray continually, obeying and reasoning will be easier because your mind will be transformed by the renewing of your mind with the word. His thoughts will now become your thoughts and obeying Him becomes easier because you are on the same wavelength. David said, “Your word have I hidden inside my heart that I may not sin against you”.

The obedience is not hard because you have help. The Holy Spirit is resident on the inside of you to guide, teach and show you things to come. It is important for you to train your spirit so that you are sensitive to the leading/direction of the Lord. God is more interested in obedience than sacrifices because He is more concerned about His people than a ritual. He knows sacrifices are directed towards Him but obedience is for the benefit of His creation. Talk about Agape Love! God, who is Love, considers the concerns of others more than him and knows that my and your obedience is the gateway to their deliverance.

The Gateway to their Deliverance

Obedience not only helps you as an individual. Your obedience sometimes is what stands between another person and their deliverance. In the entire bible, deliverance of a people depended on the obedience of an individual. Jonah and Nineveh, Jesus and we, Moses and Israelites are some of the examples in the bible that show how obedience of individuals resulted in the redemption of countless many. It is important to heed to the voice of the Lord when he talks to you. It is not only for your own deliverance because obeying the voice of the Lord has benefits for others too.

God has purposed to deliver people through people and that is why we are called co-workers together with Him. God in His sovereignty has given us the opportunity to partner with Him in this work. Therefore, you can’t afford to just act any way you want to His call. You have to be alert such that when he says go, you go. It is that simple.

God is not like the devil.  He is a gentleman who won’t force his way in our lives. It is up to us to allow Him to use us as avenues to bless others as He meets their needs through us. God has called us to work alongside Him not to execute our wishes and commands but His because He is our Lord.