OBEDIENCE IS BETTER
God inspired me to do a new
painting, so I got started yesterday with the prep work. The above photo is of an
old painting before I took it off the frame and replaced it with a fresh canvas.
The new painting God has inspired me to do is a combination of
three-dimensional and fifth-dimensional concepts. I’m not sure I can pull it off
since it’s much more abstract than my usual work. But the goal is obedience to
the Father, plain and simple.
Who knows, it may not even be about
the finished product at all, but rather, more about what God will be teaching
me in the process. I just obey but starting, and then we’ll see. To God, our
decision to be obedient to Him is so important. We obey Him in even the
smallest things, and He overflows us with blessings. How happy are you parents
when your children just happily obey you? God tells us and shows us the results
of obeying Him. On the other hand, when you look up some of the verses that
talk about obedience, you’ll also see what happens when we don’t obey God.
Yikes! We definitely don’t want to take that path!
For some of you who have been visited
by angels or are expecting to be visited by angels, God has something really
interesting to say about obeying those messengers.
“Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in
the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. Beware of him,
and obey his voice, provoke him not; for he will not pardon your
transgressions: for my name is in him.
“But if thou shalt indeed obey his voice, and do all
that I speak; then I will be an enemy unto thine enemies, and an adversary unto
thine adversaries. For mine Angel shall go before thee, and bring thee in
unto the Amorites, and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Canaanites,
and the Hivites, and the Jebusites: and I will cut them off” (Exod. 23:20-23).
So here God is telling us if He sends us an angel
to guide us and we obey the guidance, we can walk through enemy territory
unscathed, and in fact, God will cut them off. As it says in Psalm 91: 7-8: “A thousand shall fall at thy side, and
ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee. Only with
thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked.”
In 1 Samuel 15:22, God tells us something
about His priorities: “And Samuel said, ‘Hath the Lord as great delight in
burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to
obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat
of rams.’”
One of our favorite Bible heroes, Abraham, is
one of the greatest examples of what true obedience looks like.
“By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a
place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went
out, not knowing whither he went.
By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a
strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with
him of the same promise: for he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose
builder and maker is God” (Heb. 11:8-10).
Abraham obeyed God and followed His lead. He
was seeking God’s city, a place built and made by God. Isn’t that what we all
seek? A kingdom where we are free, and we are loved, and we are protected? The
way to get there is the way God shows us. It’s a path we can only travel by
being obedient to Him, one step at a time, on things as small as a painting or
as big as Abraham’s moving to a whole different country.
Love, Carolyn
What if you took an
average ordinary person, gave them an incredible cache of weapons and skills to
become extraordinary beyond their wildest dreams? Find those weapons and skill
packages in the true-life stories of my books and booklets.
No comments:
Post a Comment