Tag Archives: obedience

Do Not Be Silent

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Acts 5

I am going to do something some of you might not appreciate. I am going to take a verse out of context. But I promise you, I am doing this believing that, although the words were said to a specific group of people, the principle is demonstrated throughout Scripture.

Peter and John were put in prison for telling people about Jesus. The powers that be were intent on stopping them, but wanted to tread lightly for fear of the Jews. One man stood up and said:

Leave these men alone! Let them go! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop them; you will only find yourselves fighting against God. (5:38b-39)

We just had an election and the Democratic platform, I believe of human origin, failed. The killing of babies as their focus, sexual deviant behavior championed, and their candidate voicing what the platform promotes when she publicly and joyfully said to a Christian, “I think you are at the wrong rally,” and had him escorted out of the venue. The party made it clear that God, the Bible, and Christians, have no place in their government – and their government failed.

I am absolutely NOT saying the Republican Party is pure and stands for God. But I know millions of Christians stormed the gates of Heaven and prayed that God would have mercy on this nation, that He would defeat Satan at the polls, and give us another chance to repent, turn from our wicked ways, and return to one nation under God.

The answer to those prayers is a second Trump presidency and a Republican controlled House and Senate.

But, Christian, don’t think for a minute the battle is won. It’s not over. We have work to do. A lot of work to do. We have seen that the Republican Party is open to listening to our voices.

God gave YOU another chance to make your voice heard. Your voice is heard by how you spend your money – Starbucks? Disney? What is your voice saying when you support companies such as these?

Your voice is heard when you volunteer or support pregnancy centers, when you attend school board meetings and hold them accountable. When you get involved in your community government, or run for state office, or maybe a national office.

Your voice is heard when you write your governors, your senators and congressmen. Please write. And keep writing.

And pray. Pray every day for the direction of your communities and our nation. Stop listening to the voices of evil and recognize the voice of God. Then obey.

Because if we sit back and allow non-Christian Republicans to fashion our government it will be of human origin – and it will fail!

Your voice was heard on Tuesday. This is not the time to go silent.

You Matter

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Nehemiah 11-12; 1 Chronicles 9

I have to admit I skimmed over many of the names listed here this morning. Yet I know God inspired that list for a reason. None of these men would be remembered otherwise.

They weren’t all priests. None of them were kings. They weren’t prophets or poets. So why are they listed in Scripture, along with the menial jobs some of them had?

I think God wants us to know He sees each of us. We’re not all preachers or presidents. We’re not all soloists or song writers. Most of us aren’t known outside our churches, and many of us serve in ways not even our church family knows.

But all of us are important in the ministry. God wants us to know He sees our obedience – and it matters!

You matter.

So if you hold babies in the nursery so moms and dads can go to worship without distraction, if you pull weeds or clean toilets, God sees. If you sing in the choir, visit shut-ins, send cards, or get on your knees in the privacy of your own home and pray, God sees. What you do matters to God.

You matter.

What If We Obeyed?

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Zechariah 8; Ezra

The temple in Jerusalem was being rebuilt. There was opposition, of course. But the opposition could not stand against the Truth. God’s house would be restored.

The Jews let God call the shots. (now there’s a novel idea). They didn’t go to war against those who wanted to stop the work. There was no mean Twitter exchange. They kept on working and let the Truth do its thing.

In fact, here are the things God told them to do instead of seeking revenge:

“…Speak the truth to each other, and render true and sound judgment in your courts; do not plot evil against your neighbor, and do not love to swear falsely. I hate all this,” declares the Lord. (Zechariah 8:16-17)

I wonder what would happen if Trump and Harris obeyed this during tonight’s debate. I wonder how our nation, our churches, our families would fare if we all obeyed.

They tried

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Jonah 1-4

There are so many lessons to be learned from Jonah. Today the sailors spoke to me, maybe for the first time. They were pagan. they didn’t know God and most likely thought He was just another god like the ones they worshiped.

When the storm came they cried out to their gods, they tried to lighten the ship by throwing their valuable cargo overboard. They did everything they knew to do to save themselves.

These seem like really good men. Even when Jonah said God was punishing him and that if they wanted to be saved they needed to throw him overboard, they couldn’t do it. They continued to struggle against the storm, throwing more things overboard while sparing the life of Jonah.

But no matter how moral they were, or how hard they worked, or how many times they cried out to their gods, the storm kept getting worse. It wasn’t until they obeyed God that the storm calmed, and they were saved.

Does that remind you of so many in our world these days? Sometimes we think the enemies of God are bad people. But many, if not most are nice, moral, hard working, well meaning people doing everything they can to calm the storm, to be ok, to save themselves. What they find it hard to do is to surrender to the will of God. Thing is, there is no salvation apart from God.

I’m so glad the sailors we read about in the book of Jonah recognized the truth about God and believed. I pray the same will be true for the modern-day sailors who are trying so hard to save themselves. May they give it up, surrender to God, obey Him, accept the gift of grace through the blood of Jesus… and be saved.

Lip Service

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Joshua 24

Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but Joshua told the Israelites to “throw away the foreign gods that are among you and yield your hearts to the Lord, the God of Israel.” The Jews responded: “We will serve the Lord our God and obey Him.”

Was that response an appeasement to Joshua akin to “whatever?” There wasn’t anything wrong with what they said, necessarily. It had the acceptable “Christian” catch-phrases. But it kind of seems like lip service to me.

Joshua had given them two specific tasks.
1. get rid of the idols among you
2. yield your hearts to the Lord

The Jews promised neither. And reading about the choices they make in the Promised Land indicates they did neither. Lip service.

God is still telling His children to throw away the idols among us AND yield our hearts to Him. Do we sit here and say, “Sure, God. Whatever you say,” then go on our merry way holding onto sin, to self, to success…? Do we say we yield our hearts, yet hold onto thinking God ought to yield His heart to ours and give us what we want?

Lip service.

Lip service is not obedience. And obedience is what God demands. I don’t think God is interested in the words. He is interested in the action.

Like I said, maybe I’m reading too much into this. But maybe I’m not.

The Lord Helping Me

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Joshua 12-17

There are two separate and opposite approaches to following God in these chapters. God had given the land to the Jews marked it out for them so each tribe knew what was their’s. However, there were people already living on that land and in those cities. Taking the land would require more than a U-Haul. It would require wars – victories and defeats. It would require strength and faith and obedience.

So here is approach #1: CALEB (14:10-15)

At 85 he was as fit as he was at 40. (I am neither). God had promised Caleb a portion of the land after he and Joshua had spied out the land and came back with a report saying they could defeat the giants living there. The other spies threw fear into the people and the whole nation was forced to wander 40 years in the wilderness as punishment for their lack of faith in God.

Now it was time to do what they should have done 40 years earlier. Caleb had been ready then. He was ready now. Here is his approach:

You yourself heard then that the Anakites were there and their cities were large and fortified, BUT, the Lord helping me, I will drive them out JUST AS HE SAID. (vs 12b) (emphasis mine)

Caleb was ready to take the land at 85! Why? He trusted God. He knew God would help him do what God told him to do.

Which leads to approach #2: THE TRIBE OF JOSEPH (17:14-18)

They had already taken the land God had given them. Well, kind of. The Canaanites didn’t go down easily and were still living shoulder to shoulder with the Jews. The descendants of Joseph were living in the land, but they were outgrowing it. There just wasn’t room for the Canaanites AND the Israelites.

So they went to Joshua and complained about the crowded living conditions. “We need more land,” they said.

I think Joshua probably shook his head and rolled his eyes “No you don’t,” he replied. “You just need to use what God has already given you.” He told the people to get off their couches and continue the work God had assigned them. “Clear the land…you can drive out the Canaanites. Problem solved.”

We see Caleb ready to plunge head first into battle knowing God would be with him. We see Joseph’s clan hitting a road block of their own making, and wanting to take a detour. They wanted the blessing without the work. They wanted God to give them, without having faith God would help them, get what they needed.

In which approach to following God do you see yourself? I know God has given you a task, has given you land to clear so to speak. Do you grab His hand and go to work? Or do you sit back and expect Him to give you land already cleared by someone else?

Do you expect blessing without obedience, favor without faith?

There is still land to possess, souls in need of a Savior, sins that need to be annihilated in your life and mine. God says, “Go.” How do you approach obedience? How do I?

God WILL go with you. He WILL fight for and with you. Do you trust Him? I pray that you – and I – will say with Caleb:

I know that what God is asking me to do seems impossible but, the Lord helping me, I will take the land.

Don’t Go Back

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Deuteronomy 26-28

“A journey I said you should never make again.” (28:6b)

God, as He repeatedly does, lays out His demands, His blessings for obedience, His punishment for disobedience. There need be no question what is involved in God’s kingdom.

Throughout Scripture, God begs us to follow Him. He pleads with us to obey Him. He warns us over and over about the consequences that come with disobedience. He lays out a path for us to take that leads to glorious blessings. He wants us to take that path. But He won’t force us.

That path is paved with the blood of Jesus. It’s the path that leads us away from our bondage to sin, away from darkness and pain, and into freedom, love, light, and joy. It breaks God’s heart to see anyone turn around and head back toward the darkness and bondage.

It’s a journey we should never make again.

Yet some do. Some choose sin over holiness, self over surrender, things over a relationship with God. The path isn’t always easy. And some people just don’t want to make the effort.

These days when so many people are “deconstructing” their faith, please don’t go back. Hear God say:

Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, “This is the way; walk in it. (Isaiah 30:21)

In which direction are you heading? My prayer, and God’s desire, is that you will follow Him with surrender, obedience, determination, faith, and joy. Because not following Him is a journey you should never make again.

Purge

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Deuteronomy 16-20

I walk into my closet and know I need to purge. I know it feels good once it’s done. I just hate the thought of “doing.” I can come up with so many reason to keep those blouses I haven’t worn in three years. I mean, I just might start that diet and lose those twenty pounds so those blouses fit again.

I might.

God told the Israelites to purge the evil from among them. It wasn’t a suggestion. But Scripture tells us they didn’t always do that. They came up with many reasons to hold on to things that should have been eliminated. The outcome was always disastrous.

I think we can apply this same principle to the Church in 2024. So much of the evil God pointed out to the Jews has found a home in our churches. And we’ve come up with many reason to keep the evil there. Call it tolerance. Call it love. Call it preference. Call it being relative to societal changes. Sin has found a home where it should not be.

I think I can apply this same principle to myself. I have to ask myself if the sins God addressed to the Jews have found a home in me? Or have I done the work? Have I purged sin in my actions, my thoughts, my words? When I recognize that sin hiding behind a good deed or time in God’s Word, do I immediately throw it under the blood of Jesus, or do I tell myself I’ll get to that later?

Purging is hard. It takes work. It has to be intentional. The thing is NOT purging the evil in us has disastrous results.

You know that, if you have purged, surrendered to God, confessed and repented of sin, there is joy that comes from being clean. You know it’s worth the “doing.”

Purging my closet can wait. Purging my heart cannot. And purging the Church might be something we can work on together.

Listen

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Exodus 4-7

The thing that stood out to me today is that the Israelites did not listen to what God was telling them through Moses because of their circumstances and emotions (6:9). They were discouraged because they were being treated unfairly.

Understandable because Pharaoh really wasn’t being fair. They really were being mistreated and most likely couldn’t see a way out.

But instead of going to God, trusting God, they cut Him off. Instead of being open to hearing His voice, they stopped listening.

Boy, can I relate. I haven’t gone through a fraction of what these Israelites did in Egypt. Yet when faced with my own hardships I’ve been known to give God the cold shoulder. My prayers are fewer. My expressions of love more guarded. My time in His Word is met with silence.

And when I stop listening, I fall deeper and deeper into self-pity and even despair. It’s at those times I’m discouraged, and can’t see a way out.

God, help me – help all of us – to keep the lines of communication open between us and You. I don’t even want to think about all we miss when we allow our circumstances to drown out Your voice. Help us to trust You, and submit ourselves and our circumstances into Your capable hands. Speaking for myself, I don’t want to miss anything You want to say to me.

Take Off Your Sandals

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Exodus 1-4

Moses grew up a prince in the palace of the most powerful king in the world at that time. He most likely had everything a boy could ask for. In fact, the first forty years of Moses’ life was lived in luxury, honor, and privilege. He knew he wouldn’t be king, his stepfather had an older son. But if something should happen to his brother? Maybe.

Think of all the ways God could have saved Israel if Moses had been King of Egypt! If I were writing the story, I think that’s direction I’d take. But it wasn’t until Moses left that life and took on the lowest rung of the career ladder in Egypt… shepherd!… that God called him into action.

In fact, God waited another forty years until the prince in Moses was worked out of him and only a shepherd remained. Then Moses was ready for the task at hand.

How often do we think God can only use the successful, popular, well-spoken extroverts to do great things? That’s not true. In fact often we see those kinds of people rejected by God in favor of the weak and lowly. Think the shepherd boy David. Think the recluse John the Baptist. Think the fishermen, tax collector, disciples. Think Mary Magdalene. Dozens and dozens of outcasts and “sinners” used by God in extraordinary ways.

God delights in using ordinary people like you and me who are willing to take off our sandals and stand on holy ground, to allow God to show His strength in our weakness, His power through us so He is clearly seen.

So whether you are living in a palace or sleeping under the stars with smelly sheep, God can use you. Take off your sandals. Spend time on holy ground. Stop the excuses and submit to the perfect will of God. Moses saw incredible things happen when he did that.

And so will you!