Knowing vs. Obeying

Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.”

John 14:23 (NKJV)

Do you know what brings weight and substance to your faith?

Obedience. We see in the life of David that what brought him victory was not just the fact that he prayed, but the fact that he obeyed.

I'll confess that I have, in my life, done a whole lot of praying and then finished my prayers and gone and done exactly what I wanted to do. David, on the other hand, not only prayed; he obeyed.

We’ve got to trust the value of being obedient. In whatever way God decides He wants to work, and no matter how I pray, what makes the difference is not only our trust, but our courage to obey.

• Don't give God passionate praise and then feeble obedience.
• Don't live your life being a heavy worshiper, but then acting in disobedience. 
• Don't give God aggressive service and then be sloppy in following His instruction.
• Don’t offer God desperate prayers followed by casual obedience.

If you ask God to make a way, then do what He says. I agree with Eugene Peterson when he says “Obedience is the thing—living in active response to the living God. The most important question we ask of [a Bible] text is not, ‘What does this mean?’ but ‘What can I obey?’”

More than 90 people conducted an all-night search for an eight-year-old boy named Dominic, who, while on a skiing trip with his father, had skied off the run without realizing it. They hoped to find Dominic somewhere on the snowy mountain slope before it was too late, but as each hour passed, the search party and the boy's family became more and more concerned.

At dawn, they sent out helicopters to search from above. The helicopters spotted some faint ski tracks which changed to small footprints, which led to a tree where they found little Dominic. To everyone’s astonishment, the boy was in such good shape, he didn't even need to be admitted to the hospital to be checked out.

How did Dominic fare so well despite spending an entire night in the freezing elements? His father had had enough forethought to warn the boy what to do if he ever found himself lost: find a tree, snuggle up to it, and cover yourself with branches.

As a young child, Dominic never would have thought of doing this on his own. But his father told him what to do. Even though he had this lesson as part of his intellectual acumen, Dominic wasn't saved by his knowing; he was saved by his obeying.

The same is true for you and me.