Obeying God: Challenges and Rewards

SPEAKER 01 : 0:00

Welcome to the InTouch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Thursday, October 30th. We often learn right from wrong by making mistakes and dealing with the consequences. Today, you’ll get biblical advice on how to avoid some of that pain in part one of Obeying God.

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When you’re making a very important decision in your life, what’s the ultimate question you ask? What’s the sort of the bottom line? Somebody says, well, I ask the question, is this going to profit me? Is it going to bring me pleasure? What are the folks going to think? What’s the bottom line question that is safe every single time you come to a decision? The bottom line is, am I obeying God? And as you heard me say many times, obey God, leave all the consequences to Him. And the issue is simply this, if I do that, I’m going to save myself a lot of heartache, a lot of burdens, a lot of embarrassment, and probably a lot of loss in lots of ways. So, this whole issue of obedience, oftentimes people don’t like to think about it. They say, well, you know, there are many other subjects in the Bible that are much more pleasant than obedience. But let me just say this, if you don’t get that one straight, the rest of them are not going to work. And if you’ll think about this, when your children came into the world, what’s one of the things that you want to be sure that you taught them? What? To obey you. And the silly, ridiculous attitude and idea that people had a generation ago, you do not spank your children, you don’t discipline your children. Well, then what you’re saying is, we teach them to be disobedient. Because think about this for a moment. Every child comes into the world. with an attitude of disobedience. So what do you do? You say, I must teach you to be obedient, right? And so you go about teaching them to be obedient. And some of us learn later than others. Some of us learn earlier than others. But we all have to learn obedience. If we don’t learn obedience, we’re not fit to live with. And so it’s a vital part of our life. Now, have you ever thought about this, that you also have to learn to obey God? You can’t be passive about obedience. Obedience is an attitude and an action we have to learn how to carry out. Would you consider yourself an obedient Christian? So, I want us to think about this whole idea of learning to be obedient. And how does a Christian learn obedience? We take it for granted. And I think about how many people get saved and they start coming to Sunday school or church, whatever it might be, and somehow nobody ever sits them down to say, Now, you have to learn how to live this life. And we’ll talk about discipleship and things like that. But when it gets all down to the bottom line, it’s learning to be obedient to God. So, if somebody said to you, well, how do I learn to be obedient? Where do I start? Well, that’s what I want us to do this morning is I want us to start. And I want to deal with a verse of Scripture in Hebrews chapter 5 because it doesn’t look like it fits what it says. In Hebrews chapter 5, verse 7. And there are lots of verses in the Bible about Jesus and His attitude about obedience and about His own obedience to the Father. But look at this sixth chapter, or fifth chapter of Hebrews, verse seven. In the days of His flesh, He offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the one who is able to save Him from death. And He was heard because of His piety. Now watch this. Although He was a Son, that is the Son of God, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered. Now, listen carefully. That does not mean that He was disobedient and had to learn obedience. That’s not it at all. But what that really means is simply this, that in His humanity, in His humanity, He was both deity and humanity. In His humanity, He learned the impact of full obedience to the Father at the cross. In other words, He knew all about everything. But when it came to this issue of obedience unto death, and that’s what that’s referring to. It’s not referring to the fact that he’d sinned, he’s disobedient, now he had to learn how to be obedient. He was always obedient. And if you’ll turn, for example, to a couple of passages. Look in John chapter eight for a moment and look what Jesus says here in this passage. eighth chapter. So, Jesus said, When you lift up the Son of Man, you will know that I am He, and I do nothing on My own initiative, but I speak those things as the Father taught Me. And so, as he was growing up and learning to listen to the Father, he was always obedient. And then the sixth chapter and the thirty-eighth verse, look at this if you will. Jesus said, For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. And so everywhere you’d find Jesus talking about His relationship to the Father, He says, I want to do those things that I see the Father doing. That was His whole perspective. So He didn’t learn how to be obedient from disobedience. He was learning the meaning of full obedience to the Father that cost Him His life at the cross. So, when you and I think about obedience, how would you define it? Obedience is real simple. Obedience says, I do what God says, when He says it, how He says it, for whatever reason He says it, or with whom He says it. In other words, it’s all about Him. There’s not anything passive about being obedient. It’s active. It’s a decision that you and I make whether we will obey God or not in whatever the situation may be. Now, what is the greatest enemy to obedience? Partial obedience. is the greatest enemy to obedience because if I say, well, God told me to give a tithe and so I gave at least five percent. Well, you say, well, isn’t that obedience? Obedience is doing what He says, when He says, why He says, how He says, where He says, or whatever it might be. It isn’t partial. And I think a lot of people trust Jesus as their Savior, and a lot of times it’s because nobody taught them. And so, they do some things that they believe that are right and good, and then there’s some things they know that that really doesn’t fit who they are as followers of Jesus Christ. And so, you ask them, are you a Christian? Yes. Are you an obedient Christian? Yes. And they can name you all the things that they do partially. or sort of, or sometimes. But obedience says, I do what He says, when He says, for whatever reason He says, where He says, or with whom if someone else is involved. It isn’t partial. It’s an active act on our part of being obedient. For example, when your children were growing up and you said, eat everything on your plate. They got in about halfway full and you said, I said everything. You said, look how much I’ve already done. And sometimes when God works on our heart and He tells us to do something and we think we’ve done enough, we think we’ve been obedient. You say, isn’t that getting sort of strict? No, define obedience. Obedience is doing what God says, when He says do it, how He says do it, as long as He says do it. That doesn’t mean that we’re perfect. We’ll never be perfect. But I see so many Christians who really believe that they’re walking in the Spirit of God, who are allowing things in their life that absolutely are not of God, could not possibly be of God, and they rationalize it. And rationalization is Satan’s, listen, that’s Satan’s attempt to keep you off base in your relationship to Him. If I want God’s best in my life, I must be obedient to Him. And if you’ll think about how wise that is, God who is omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, loves us absolutely perfectly, and He’s given us a course to live, you can’t improve on His course. In other words, He has the best plan for every single one of us. He has the best answer for every question we ask. He has the best of everything if we’ll follow Him. How do we follow Him? We obey Him or we don’t obey Him. For example, somebody says, Well, what’s a carnal Christian? Well, a carnal Christian, if we put it in terms of what we’re talking about, is the person who’s been saved by the grace of God, but who has reserved certain parts of their life to do what they want to do. And they go to church and they give and they read the Bible and pray. But there’s some things over here that In other words, carnality is that part of us that’s something within us that does not want to be obedient to God. And so, we obey Him in things which is convenient, things that are not convenient we don’t, and we think that we are obeying God. And then we wonder oftentimes, why doesn’t God bless me? And I hear people say, I can’t figure out why God doesn’t bless me. Why doesn’t He do this and why doesn’t He do that? Well, the first place to look is within yourself and ask yourself the question, am I really and truly living an obedient, godly life? So, when I think about the number one enemy, partial obedience. Now, the second thing I would say is simply this. The Garden of Eden was the first school. God created for us to teach us obedience. And what happens? If you’ll notice in the Garden of Eden what God didn’t say. He didn’t talk to Adam and Eve about faith. He didn’t talk to them about humility. He didn’t talk to them about anything but one thing. He said there is a tree in the midst of this garden that you absolutely must not touch. Everything else is wide open and absolutely, totally satisfying, but there’s one thing you can’t touch without paying the consequence. Think about this. Think of all the trees they had, and He said, now don’t touch that one. So, what do they do? Go straight to that one. So, many people don’t realize you have to learn to be obedient. All of us have failed. Now, we all fail really because we desire our way above God’s way, so we choose to be disobedient. Well, can I choose to be obedient? Yes, I can. Now, when your children come into this world, they don’t know anything about obedience and disobedience. But isn’t it interesting, they don’t start out being obedient. They just start out being disobedient. Do they choose to do that? They don’t realize what they’re doing. And it’s almost like a lot of us grow up and we never do learn what to do. Obedience is God’s way. And it’s the best way, listen, it’s the best way every single solitary time. Amen? That’s a little light. Let me ask you a question. If you believe that obedience is always God’s best way, say amen. All right, then why don’t you do it? Because we have all kinds of reasons. Well, but you don’t know about this, and this is what happens, and this is the way they treated me, and here’s what’s going on in my life, and here’s my need. But remember what we said. Is His way the best way? Yes. If I have a need and God allows that need, is that the best way at that moment? Yes. If I hurt over something, is that the best way at that moment? Yes, because we say, we believe that God is engineering our circumstances so that all things are worked together for our good. Now, He didn’t say wouldn’t be hurtful, wouldn’t be painful, wouldn’t lose something, whatever it might be. Obedience is God’s absolute bottom line. And most people are not willing to commit themselves to that. Whatever God says is what I’m going to do. It’ll bring you joy, it’ll bring you pleasure, it’ll bring you enemies. But you and I must be obedient to God to live out the life that He’s called us to live out. Most people are in trouble because they’ve disobeyed some simple principle of God. And one of those simple principles, and we continue to lay out there because it’s so simple and you don’t forget it. We reap what we sow, more than we sow, later than we sow. Okay, if I know that’s true, if I really and truly believe that, then I’m going to obey the principles that God has given us. And think about this, all the principles God’s given us for our good, they’re all for our good. And so somehow we find ourselves in the same classroom and we fail. The third thing I want you to notice is this, that Jesus is the pattern. His life is the pattern for us. And this is a beautiful way to put it. What Jesus said in the fourth chapter of John, and He was talking to the woman at the well. And as He’s talking to her, the disciples had gone, and so Jesus said in the thirty-fourth verse, My food, is to do the will of Him who sent me and to accomplish His work.” Now, what is he saying? He’s saying, you know what fulfills me? Doing the will of my Father. What fulfills me is obeying the Father. What fulfills me is walking in the Father’s way. Look at that. My food, that is what satisfies me, what energizes me, is to do the will of Him who sent me and to accomplish His work. And when I look at these verses and look at the life of Jesus and how He lived out His life, I love this verse, both of these, and He who sent me is with me. He’s not left me alone for I always do the things that are pleasing to Him. You know what I marked up in my Bible years ago and I thought, I always want to do the things that please Him. And I can tell you today that probably one of the things that I am most grateful for in my life, that my grandfather sat down with me for one week as an eighteen-year-old teenager and told me something that has been like the guiding light in my life when he said to me, Obey God and leave all the consequences to Him. I didn’t understand it at the moment. I chuckled at it because what he really said was, obey God and if God tells you to run your head through a brick wall, head for the wall. When you get there, God will make a hole for it. And so, that was sort of my response. But the more I thought about it, and this is what happens, if you obey God, You may lose some of your friends. You obey God, you could lose your job. You obey God, some folks won’t understand you. You obey God, oftentimes you’ll have conflict. But obedience is the bottom line. And here’s what Jesus said. He said, when you look at His attitude and His actions, the thing that satisfied Jesus It’s not how many people he had listening to him at the Sermon on the Mount, all the crowds that followed him, the fact that everybody thought that he was something special. That’s not what satisfied him. What satisfied him, what satisfied his soul when he was out in the wilderness on his knees early in the morning talking to the Father, what brought him the greatest delight was that he could do the full will of the Father, that he could walk in obedience. Are you happier when you know that you’re obeying God? Are you happier when you know that you’re being disobedient? Then why don’t we obey Him? If you’ll think about the reasons people don’t obey God, well, I may miss something. Are you going to miss something that God who loves you has planned your life? There may be some things in life you need to miss. And there’s some things in life you need to be there when it happens. And when you’re walking in His will, you’ll be there. You will not, listen, you will not miss when you walk in the will of God and be obedient to Him. Now, so with all that in mind, let’s think about how do we learn to obey God? You didn’t come into the world with knowing how. So, I just want to give you some things to consider in your own life because nobody knows your life like you do. But you need to learn how to be obedient to God. And the first one is simply this. You must first choose to trust Him. If you don’t trust Him, you’re not going to obey Him. Because one of the primary reasons we don’t obey God is we don’t believe what He says. When God says, I will supply all your needs according to His riches and glory in Christ Jesus, when He says that and I go out and do something that is ridiculous and something that is dishonest in order to get something that I want, I desire, what I’ve said is I don’t believe God. So, the second thing is this. We must determine to be willing to wait upon God in prayer. Many times God will tell us to do something and make it very clear. But He doesn’t say, do it now. And sometimes He doesn’t say when He’s going to do it. But He just says, here’s what I want you to do. And, well, Lord, now when? And sometimes you and I may pray about something for a long time before we get the go signal. And you say, well, what’s that about? Here’s what it’s about. It’s about God loving you enough and knowing you perfectly to know when you are ready for whatever it is you’re seeking. And sometimes what you’re looking for, what you’re seeking is not anything disobedient. It may be absolutely right down the center of the will of God, but His timing is important. And especially, for example, if that relates to somebody else or some situation or your job or whatever it might be. It’s that getting ahead of God that gets us in trouble. So, ask yourself the question, do you have a difficult time waiting upon God? And notice I said, waiting upon Him in prayer. If you’re not praying about the will of God, something that you’re questioning in your life or you’re trying to find His will about, if you’re not praying about it, before long you’re going to step right ahead of God. And the problem is, you’re going to be out of God’s will. And I think one of, the sixty-second Psalm, look at that for a moment. I can think for a moment when I was really, really needing God’s guidance and direction and leadership in an awesome way. And my heart was heavy about it all. And so, I was praying and just asking God to give me direction. And sometimes I’ll just flip through the Scripture and say, God, You know what I need to hear this morning. I don’t know what I need to hear, but You know what I need to hear. You know where I am. You know what I’m looking for. I want to be obedient to You. What do I do at this point? And I’ll never forget this verse. My soul waits in silence for God only. From Him is my salvation. He only is my rock and my salvation. My stronghold I shall not be greatly shaken. And the fifth verse. My soul wait in silence for God, for my hope, listen, my hope is from Him. If you and I are going to be obedient to God, we’re going to have to learn, listen, to follow on His time, not our time.

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Thank you for listening to Obeying God. For more inspirational messages like this one, visit our online 24-7 station. And if you’d like to know more about Charles Stanley or InTouch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of InTouch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.