Week 6 Day 3-Obey God

-O-

Day 3 – Obey What God Says (John 15:10-11)

¹⁰ “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments, and abide in His love.  ¹¹  “These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.

    Verse 10-11.  Notice Jesus does not say “If you hear My commandments, you will abide in My love.” We are to keep God’s commandments.

    What do you think of when you hear the words “obey”, “obedience”, or “commandments”?          

    Often when we hear those words, we think of rules, regulations, and legalism. We think the term obedience only applies to children or even to animals, such as a dog’s “obedience school”. However, in our Christian growth as church members, we should think about what motivates us to follow God’s commands.

    Love. In the previous chapter, Jesus said that love should motivate Christians. “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. He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine but the Father’s who sent Me.” (John 14:25-26)

    If keeping Jesus’s words is a sign of love, what is not keeping His words a sign of? Have you ever considered sin in your life as a lack of love for God?          

    John 15:11 states that obedience, coupled with love, will yield both joy in Christ and joy in our lives to the fullest. Keeping the commandments legalistically will not produce joy, but loving obedience yields fruit in our lives, even beyond love and joy.

     Galatians 5:22-23 lists the fruit of the spirit as being “love, joy, peace, longsuffering (patience), kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.”  A good sign on whether our motivation for obeying God is what kind of fruit accompanies our obedience?

    When Jesus told Peter to feed His lambs and tend His sheep, the Lord wanted to make sure that Peter knew his sacrificial service should be motivated out of love for Him (see John 21:15-19). The two greatest commandments center on love as our motivation (Matthew 22:36-40).

    Abidance. Our fruitful obedience as believers is directly tied to abiding in Christ. The word abide can also be translated as “living in” or “taking up residence in”.  One of the best ways to abide in Christ is to have regular, daily devotional times, also called “Quiet Times”. The time you spend should include prayer, reading, and studying the word of God.

    A tree will likely become more fruitful when there is an excess of nourishment. The pruning and purging Jesus spoke of in John 15 are the hard times that we all go through. I have found that nothing will make me pray more, read the Bible more, seek God more, and abide and obey Him more, than when I go through pruning and purging times.

   One of the earliest letters of the Bible is the book of James, written to those who had been “scattered among the nations” as a result of the persecution of the early church. The second verse of the first chapter says, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.”

    Why do hard times help us stay near (abide) with Christ and persevere?

    Someone has rightly said that Jesus commanded us to be fruit-bearers, not fruit inspectors. Jesus 's statement of “You shall know them by their fruits,” found in Matthew 7:16, is a call for us to examine our own lives first.

Day 4, Witness to Others