Hear and Obey

Morning Musings

I’m writing this post a day or so later than normal. It’s Wednesday. A few weeks ago, I emailed our church to ask if they would fast and pray with us on Wednesdays. Here are a few things I prayed for our church today: I prayed that we would experience a God-given revival that leaves us simply stunned by His work. I prayed for adults to come to faith in Jesus. I prayed that God would grant us favor with the State, City, and County officials regarding our building permits and plans. I prayed for God to give us wisdom as we work through new organizational changes, which will help us do the work of the ministry more efficiently and in better partnership. I hope you’ll take time on Wednesdays to fast and pray with us.

Ways we can deceive ourselves:

In Matthew 7:21-29, we noticed a few ways that we can deceive ourselves into thinking that our faith is solid. The ones I pointed out on Sunday were: We can ‘look’ the part, but not ‘be’ the part. We can deceive ourselves by busying ourselves with the extravagant and miss the simple and foundational. And we can deceive ourselves by misunderstanding God’s grace in relation to His commands.

Here are two more that I took out of my sermon:

We can deceive ourselves by living off yesterday’s ‘manna’ and resting on our spiritual laurels. Too many Christians (this is a particular danger for me) live off old, moldy spiritual bread. We get comfortable with where we’ve been, what we’ve done, and turn the zeal knob down. King David did this, and it cost him. Solomon did this, and it dragged him through misery. Yesterday’s spiritual ‘manna’ (which God delivered for yesterday) is not good enough for today. While it is still called ‘today,’ we must hear and obey God’s word. We must seek Him each day and submit to Him. What we did in the past or whatever God did in our lives in the past proves that He’s faithful and good, but those are not reasons for us to stop pursuing Him and obeying Him.

We can also deceive ourselves by becoming overly attentive to the ‘secret things of God,’ rather than the things He has already revealed. How many Christians have been lost in trying to determine when Jesus will return? How many have been led astray by mystical ‘words’ from the Lord that had no basis in Holy Scripture? But we do this with almost everything: We get burdened about finding “the will of the Lord,” and we paralyze ourselves from doing anything. We get locked in on finding the ‘secret’ to the abundant life (how to overcome anxiety/fear, or some hidden/unknown code) that will unlock all of God’s blessings. When we never find it, we give up on our ‘faith.’ We get discouraged by not knowing what our special spiritual gift is and miss opportunities to serve others right where we are, because we’re so concerned for ourselves.

Hear and obey:

During our review session on Tuesday, one of our brothers discussed the importance of hearing God’s word and obeying Him. He went on to say that the theme of the passage is the fact that self-deception is a fruit of hearing and not doing God’s word. Luke 8:31 and James 1:22-25 prove this.

This is exactly true. Christian people have been saved by grace to be empowered by grace. The commands of Jesus are not to be taken lightly, but neither is the power He’s given us. He’s given us the power to hear AND obey. When we deliberately choose not to obey Him, we deceive ourselves.

The Sermon on the Mount has challenged us to evaluate our lives by Jesus’ Kingdom rules. It has caused us to see our need for transformation. I needed it and so did our church.

Looking ahead:

This Sunday, we will study Mark 1:40-45 as we begin a new series called “Moments with Jesus.” In this series, we will examine eight moments when Jesus encountered the desperate, the sick, the needy, and the broken. The hope of this series is to help us see how Jesus treated people like this so we can be more effective in caring for others in our world.

Cheap Seats: