Obedience.

Too often we accept God as a person who is available only when we need Him.

I recognize that there has been a "strongness" in my recent posts, especially in the area regarding maturity. And as I prayed and questioned God regarding maturity and myself, the reality of it came down to some simple reasons and unfortunately this on won't make us any happier.

I am talking about obedience. (OW!)

When I look to the situations that people stumble in, walk into and just jump in, one of the key ingredients is disobedience. I am fond of reminding people that disobedience is delayed obedience. If God tells me to do something and I say "tomorrow", I have pushed past the thresholds and am "walking on thin ice". "Oh brother. What about grace?" I am not removing grace from the picture or you and I would probably be pushing petunias. But does it not become a carnal game in our mind to check out the extent of grace? Perhaps we do not think so, but we are just lolling along and then when something happens we are reminded, convicted. And God say,'do you remember?" How many people (how many of us?) have told others of the voice of God and then not done it? I am concerned about the body of Christ and its "oh well", "whatever" attitude.

We begin to remove the blessings from our life by our own disobedience. So many of us can recite verses of promise, forgetting the "ifs". If you do this, I (God) will do this for you. We do not have the fear of God in our hearts. We stretch the borders(we think we do!) until something happens and then turn and say "WHY?" Hello?

We talk about God's "permissive" will and forget about His perfect will.

I can not do this for you. Your pastor can not do this for you. Your spouse can not do this for you. Only you. How many blessings are missed because of disobedience? I suspect that God is saying to each one of us today. "You read this. (Lee, you wrote this!) Do you remember when I told you to visit sister soandso? Do you remember how happy you were when I spoke to you? How you told everyone? Please do it!"

Today I go with a young man from Tanzania to teach some high schoolers. His obedience brought him to this country. Wher would you and I be if Jesus was disobedient?