Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Affirmation

I was reading today and received a word of affirmation so I thought I'd share it with you. A little back story...........at somepoint during the last year I was processing some stuff with my sweet mom and I used the term disobedient to describe a choice a made. At the time she questioned if that was the right word to use. My response was pretty simple - "Well, God told me not do it and I did it anyway." Then she agreed that it was the right word. Here's a quote from Battlefield of the Mind:
Disobedience is disregarding the voice of the Lord,
or whatever God is speaking to us personally,
not just transgressing the Ten Commandments.

We tend to think of disobedience as breaking a clearly established rule. For my kids, the "House Rules" are clearly defined and they know they will have consequences if they choose to break them. Life as a faithful Christian isn't so easily defined though. In fact, clear cut rules and regulations are quite contrary to some of the teachings in the new testament. ...a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. (Gal. 2:16)

So where does that leave us with obedience? Well, one basic premise, or rule if you like that word, is clear - believe. Believe in Jesus. Believe in God. Believe God. Very timely for me I think that we are doing Beth Moore's Believing God study this fall during LBC. It focuses on moving from believing in God to believing God. What does that mean? Here's an example:

When God told me not to do that thing I did I didn't believe Him. I didn't believe anyone else would do it if I didn't - which really means I didn't believe God would take care of it. Yikes. I believed in God, but I didn't believe Him when he said He could take care of it and it wasn't my job to do it.

So why is it so hard to believe when we feel God speaking in our spirit? That would be doubt. I think we are often guilty of not spending the time it takes to attune ourselves to the Spirit. Satan likes that. It makes it easy for him to attack us with doubt. Even when we know that we know that we know that we have heard from God, it is easy for Satan to cause us to doubt the source. Because we are not practiced in communication with Him we wonder which voice we really heard. We wonder if it's just our own voice, we wonder if it's Satan's voice, the voices of others seem so much louder than the voice we heard......and the list goes on. Please know that I didn't hear an audible voice. When I say voice I'm really describing the inner prompting you feel when the Spirit moves. I do think we need to pray expecting to hear from God.....we also need to practice listening with our spirit........and when He speaks we need to obey. Because disobedience has consequences.

3 comments:

Lara said...

I just read that part in Battlefield of the Mind last night - I wished i had that quote when I wrote my book - it would have fit right in!

Good word today!

Love you!

Nellie said...

Preach it!

Captain Cron said...

I need to subscribe to this blog. How do I do it?

This is such a great ministry effort, an avenue I don't know that I ever would have imagined.

This one really speaks to me, Sarah. Thanks :)