The Bottom Line
Have you ever been guilty of disobedience? Did your parents or a teacher ever tell you to do something and you didn’t do it? Maybe you just didn’t want to do it or thought you had more important things to do.
Disobedience to those who have God-given authority over us is a serious thing. “So anyone who rebels against authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and they will be punished” (Romans 13:2) This is a really bad situation because it’s actually disobedience to God. In fact, disobedience to God is the definition of sin. Sin is the root cause of all the pain, suffering, and death in the world. “For the wages of sin is death…” (Romans 6:23). But physical death will not be the end of it — there is still hell to pay in eternity. We need to realize how serious disobedience (sin) is.
Since everyone has sinned and is under the curse of sin, God tells us in the Bible how He sent Jesus to die as a sacrifice for sin. We can be forgiven of our sins if we will trust what Jesus did and submit to His authority. It’s a wonderful experience to be out from under the curse and burden of sin and death! We will still die physically, but go to a heavenly home in eternity.
What does God want us to do after we are free from the curse of sin? He wants us to live a life of obedience to His voice and do what He teaches us through the Bible. Did you know that obedience is the highest form of worship we can give God? He doesn’t care as much for our praise songs as He does for our obedience. Partial obedience is not obedience at all (read the account of King Saul in 1 Samuel 15). God knows we’re not able to obey Him using our own willpower. We’re too weak and our old habits are too strong for us to break. So He promised to give us His Holy Spirit to live in our spirits to help us. If we’ll cooperate with Him, together with the Holy Spirit, we can be obedient to God.
The longer we live in obedience the more we understand God and how to walk with Him. We learn His priorities, how to hear His voice, how to pray and understand His Word. You will learn that His first priority is not our comfort. He is not our genie in a bottle. We are His servants in His kingdom. We’re to be doers of His commands to accomplish His will on earth. With that perspective, we see that many of our prayers are selfish, so we shouldn’t wonder why they’re not answered. “And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure” (James 4:3).
When we’re confronted with the truth, there are two ways we can respond. We can become angry and reject it, or we can become humble and repent. Repentance will raise us to a higher level of godly character.
The Bottom Line: Make obedience your highest worship to God every day.
Pastor Jimmy Tucker
Diamond Community Church