This is Jeremiah Johnson and we’re on God Today. Today, I’d like to talk about obeying God. Obeying God is something that the scriptures don’t shy away from talking about. In fact, when Jesus Christ came to the earth He summed up all the commands of scripture into two. Many of us know them. He said, “You shall love the Lord, your God with all your mind, heart, and soul and secondly, that we should love, or we shall love, our neighbor as ourselves.”
See loving God and loving people is actually commanded in scripture. We’re commanded to obey. What you’ll find oftentimes in your Christian journey is people are inspired to obey God through a variety of ways. Some people are inspired to love God out of fear. They fear going to hell. They fear being punished, fear-based obedience.
Then you have duty based obedience. It’s more of an obligation. You meet a lot of people. They just feel obligated to obey God. They know the Bible. They know what they’re supposed to do and they’re just kind of going through the motions.
But then, to me, the highest form of obedience is actually intimate based obedience. I call it affection based obedience. This is what Jesus meant in the book of John when He said, “If you love Me, you’ll obey My commands.”
See, I want to encourage you today to obey God, to listen to his voice, to obey. But more than that, I want to encourage your obedience to be motivated by love. There are things that God asks us to do that are difficult. There will be times in life or you’ll sense that God is calling you into something. There are great sacrifices that you’ll have to make. The highest and the ultimate form of obedience is motivated by love.
I want to encourage you today to ask God to pour out His love upon you. Romans 5:5, “The love of God is poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” God commands us to love Him and the wonder of it all is He gives us His love to love Him in return. My friends, that’s great news, that’s encouraging news.
Let me pray with you today. Father, we thank You for sending Your Son dying on the cross for our sins, commanding us, even giving us an opportunity to love Him and obey Him. God, I’m asking that this is You’re calling on each of us to obey you today. Let it be motivated by love in the name of Jesus.