We resist obedience to God. In truth, we resist anything that infringes on our self-will. So we must answer the question of which is more important: our will or God’s will? It doesn’t matter how many hours you spend reading the Bible or on your knees in prayer. A.W. Tozer said, “Intensity of prayer is no criterion of its effectiveness.
A man may throw himself on his face and sob out his troubles to the Lord and yet have no intention to obey the commandments of Christ. Strong emotion and tears may be no more than the outcropping of a vexed spirit, evidence of stubborn resistance to God’s known will”. We are a people prone to going through the motions without ever experiencing the profound power of God found in a life of obedience to Him.
I am amazed at the number of people trying to determine God’s will for their lives. These people literally waste their entire life searching for that one thing God has called them to do. They sit and wait, all the while refusing to obey His commands. The irony of course is God’s will for their life, for your life, and for my life, is to live in obedience to Him. The one thing most professing Christians refuse to do is the only thing God asks of them. This has led to a world with far too many Christians and far too few disciples of Jesus.
What holds you back from living in obedience to God? Of what are you afraid? Do you think you’ll have to give up too much or do things that are too uncomfortable? Or is it simply you enjoy the illusion of being in control of your destiny, of pursuing your own dreams in your own way? When we step back and take a look at our behaviors and attitudes, are they more aligned with the spirit of Jesus or the self-deceiving, self-flattery of Satan? At its core, our lack of obedience reveals a propensity to behave like Satan, assuming we know better than God Himself.
The answer to a lack of obedience to God is surrender. Until we trust Jesus enough to surrender everything we are to Him, we will not have the faith to live in obedience to Him. When you give your life to Jesus, it involves surrendering everything to Christ and allowing Him to be the Lord of your life. That means you give up all rights to your own will and desires. From that point forward, your life is His. And if that’s true, you have no choice except to live in obedience to God and do the things Jesus commanded you to do; unless of course, you didn’t really mean it when you offered Him your life. But if you did mean it, if He truly means more to you than life itself, then it’s time to stop pretending you have any say in your own life. It’s time to live wholeheartedly in obedience to God. This is His will for your life.