Obedience

²² And Samuel said,

       “Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices,

as in obeying the voice of the Lord?

       Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice,

and to listen than the fat of rams. (1 Sam 15:21,22)

Obedience is top drawer important to God.  He not only seeks our obedience, He expects it:

⁷ “Will any one of you who has a servant plowing or keeping sheep say to him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come at once and recline at table’? ⁸ Will he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, and dress properly, and serve me while I eat and drink, and afterward you will eat and drink’? ⁹ Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? ¹⁰ So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.’ ” (Luke 17:7-10) 

Serving God is our duty.  We aren’t supposed to do it seeking some sort of reward.  It is natural for servants to serve. 

So, what do we obey God in?  We feel good if we just keep the Ten Commandments, but there are at least 613 commandments in the Old Testament alone.  No wonder the Jews had such a tough time before Christ.

Fortunately for us, Jesus gave us just two commandments: to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves (Mark 12:30, 31).  That’s our commandments to follow.  Simple, eh?  Simple, yes, but easy, no!

We are to love God with all our heart.  We are to place no one and nothing ahead of God in our love and devotion.  God is to be the center of our lives.

We are to love God with all our soul.  We are to constantly relate to Him.  We are to pray always (1 Thess. 5:16).  Our soul should be in constant contact with God, filled with His Holy Spirit and guided by Him.

We are to love God with our mind.  We are to study (2 Tim. 2:15) regularly.  We are to think, meditate, on God’s Word (Josh 1:8) and be ready to give answers to those who ask (1 Pet. 3:15).

We are to love God with all our strength.  That means we need to be ready to work for Him at any moment and for a lifetime if asked.  As Christians we don’t have the option of sitting around and not serving our Lord.  He has work for us all to do, and we need to be about doing it.

Sometimes the second commandment is the hardest, to love our neighbor as ourselves.  We face ornery people during our Christian walk.  Some people are disgusting to us in our flesh, but they are people for whom Christ died.  We need to treat them as such.  That’s hard for a lot of us.  But, God didn’t say we could skip plowing the field for harvest just because it might be difficult.

Why is this important?

We are God’s servants.  We should seek to serve Him every waking hour through all four points Jesus Himself said in Mark 12:30.  We have obligations set before us.  Our day should be dedicated to filling our hearts with God’s grace, filling our souls with God’s Spirit, Filling our minds with God’s Word, and filling our strength with the supernatural power God gives us to serve Him.

What God has given us in the sacrifice of His Son is a gift beyond measure.  We certainly don’t deserve it.  We’re not worthy of it, but because God loves us with His all, it is only our basic duty to do the same for Him.