Saturday, June 5, 2010

Trusting in and Obeying God's voice

Sometimes God speaks to our heart by His Spirit within us if we are tuned into His Holy Spirit by reading His Word.

"For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God." -Romans 8:14

If God speaks to your heart and tells you to do something, do you always obey?

What if it is something that doesn't make sense to you?

People have heard God speak to them to give a certain gift offering for instance to a ministry or to a person that He put on their heart. If they obey God, He will bless them back. If they don't obey, then God has to find another giver that He can use. Hopefully someone will eventually listen to God in the situation. Don't be left out of your blessing by leaving the obedience for someone else to do it.

Obedience to God's voice requires trust. We must trust in Him in order for us to move ahead in carrying out the act of obedience. This can be especially hard to do if what He tells us to do doesn't make sense to us. Once we hear His guiding voice, we then must make a choice to trust in Him completely. Then we can step out in faith and do the thing He told us.

Sometimes He tells us to do something that doesn't make sense and our mind wants to rationalize, and come up with excuses. But there is an unseen reason God wants us to do a certain thing. Maybe that thing He wants us to do is His requirement to bring blessing to us. It may not always have to do with giving.

I know someone who is not Jewish but was a Christian for most of his life. He never considered keeping the Sabbath Day according to the old testament because he figured that we are not under the law. Which is true. We are not under the Mosaic law, we are under the law of grace. But this person had been praying about a certain problem he had and couldn't get the breakthrough. Then one day God spoke to him in his heart and told him to keep the Sabbath Day! Well, for this Gentile Christian believer, it didn't make any sense. He said he never kept the Sabbath in his life, or even thought about it. And besides he said we are not under the law. But,... God told him to do it!

Well the man didn't listen right away. First he began to do research about what the Sabbath really is and how to really keep it. After about a month he began keeping the Sabbath, and now is seeing a miraculous turn around in his situation. You can determine whether it was his Sabbath keeping or his obedience to God that brought the breakthrough he was looking for.

All of the arguments were there about the old testament laws and all. The understanding was that he didn't start keeping the Sabbath in order to earn salvation, or that he would be condemned if he didn't, but rather out of obedience to God.

"But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law." -Galatians 5:18

If the Holy Spirit leads and guides you into doing something like this, then you are free to obey Him and you are still not under the law. You are free.

When things like this don't make sense to us, are we always willing to change our lifestyles and our busy schedules to accommodate what God said to us? Or do we continually instead rationalize away what could have been the path He chose for us to take? Be careful not to miss out on the blessing God has for you!