Skip to main content

Heart Obedience


“So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him” (Col. 2:6).

We are to obey the same way we received Christ, that is, by grace through faith.

Obedience is always from the heart. If it is from the head only, it might be by the act of will only, and therefore it will be by effort and not by grace.

Before I became a Christian, I lived a life of “obedience” in that I did not use profanity or slang, smoke, drink, or have sex. I was impressed with my goodness (or lack of badness). I impressed my non-Christian classmates with my “goodness.” I did not impress the Christians.

I had two strong attributes which also happen to be the primary attributes of Satan:

·       Arrogance: I was self-righteous and proud of it. Satan said, “I will be like the Most High.”

·       Lying: I lied very much. Jesus said of Satan that when he lies, he speaks his first language.

I was being like the devil and thinking I was good. That changed on October 18, 1947, when I came to know the Father.

Some things changed immediately: I confessed my sins and obeyed by grace.

Over the next several years, I memorized many verses of Scripture. At the time, I thought that it was a good spiritual thing to do. Under the conviction of Psalm 119:11 (“I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.”), I memorized 108 verses in the first 14 months that I was a Christian. The next year, I memorized 3 verses a week. The following year, I memorized 5 verses a week.

During that year, I began to suspicious—I had memorized several hundred verses, but I was still sinning.

The problem was that these verses were in my head, not in my heart. I realized that they needed to be hidden in my heart in order to keep me from sin.

Then on a canoe trip to Hudson Bay in 1952, our canoe got swamped in some rapids we were trying to run. All of my cards with handwritten verses on them got soaked and blurred. I had become arrogant about how many Scriptures I knew, and this wiped away the record I had been keeping of all those memorizations. I thanked God. 

How do you hide God’s Word in your heart? By believing it and obeying it.

 

Written 2022.

This post coordinates with tomorrow's reading in the To the Word! Bible Reading Challenge. If you are not in a daily reading plan, please join us at TotheWord.com. We would love to have you reading with us.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why Is Obedience So Hard?

There are several reasons why obedience seems hard. I will comment on some of them and then speak positively on how obedience is easy. We think: 1) Obedience is an infringement on freedom. Since we are free in Christ, and obedience is somehow contrary to that freedom, we conclude that obedience is not good. Yet we know it is good. Thus, we become confused about obedience and are not single-minded. 2) Obedience is works. We who have been justified by grace through faith are opposed to works; therefore, we are opposed to obedience. 3) We have tried to obey and have failed—frequently. Therefore, the only solution is to disobey and later confess to receive forgiveness. It is easier to be forgiven by grace than to obey by effort. 4) We confuse obedience to men with obedience to God. Although these are sometimes one and the same (see Romans 13, 1 Peter 2-3, Ephesians 5-6, Colossians 3, and Titus 2), sometimes they are not the same (see Colossians 2:20-23, Mark 7, 1 Timothy 4:1-5, a
6 comments
Read more

Lifted Up

In the first thirteen verses of John 3, Nicodemus did not understand what Jesus was talking about. It was nonsense to him. When Jesus said verse fourteen to him, Nicodemus finally understood Jesus. Here it is: “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up…” (John 3:14). The reason it made sense to Nicodemus was because he knew of the event that Jesus spoke of. People who had been bitten by a serpent could look at the bronze snake and did not die. Nicodemus knew the Bible story.   Here it is: “Then the LORD sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, ‘We sinned when we spoke against the LORD and against you. Pray that the LORD will take the snakes away from us.’ So Moses prayed for the people. The LORD said to Moses, ‘Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.’ So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyo
Post a Comment
Read more

Getting Old

This is a post for those who are getting old or considering themselves old, from 65-100. Right now, I am 91.* I will be 92 in October. I have my own house, but I cannot live in it alone because of my physical inability to move around. One of my sons lives with me. All of us will have to make some adjustments. That includes money, relatives, your own ability and willpower to stay independent, etc. My advice is if physically and financially you can live independently, you should certainly do that. If you do, you will still need to have visits from your family frequently. You need your family. Even if you don’t need them to take care of you, you need them for the fellowship. The more fellowship you have, the longer you’ll live. If you can stay independent do it, but only if friends and relatives can see you often. In my case, I can’t walk, and I can’t do much physically. So, whether I like it or not, someone else has to get me up, get me showered, and get me dressed. I am blessed to have
Post a Comment
Read more