Obeying God – Pt. 2 — A ‘Time With God’ Devotion

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Transcript

Good morning. Great to meet you again this morning, and let’s open the Bible and see what God has to say to us. God always is wanting to speak into your life. He loves you. He cares for you. He recognizes the issues in your life, the brokenness, the struggles, and He wants to help you get onto the path of His blessing in your life. So let’s listen to what He has to say to us today on our theme of obeying God.

In John chapter 14 in the New Testament of the Bible, here’s what Jesus says to his followers, and He’s saying it to you and me today as well. Starting in verse 15, He says, If you love me, you will keep my commandments. Well, that’s all about obedience, isn’t it? obeying God. If you love me, you will keep my commandments, and I will ask the Father, and He will give you another helper.

Because Jesus has just told them He’s going away, He’s going to die and be raised and go to the Father, and He says, I’ll give you another helper to be with you forever, even the spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world will not see me any more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. In that day you will know that I am in my Father and you in me and I in you. And here it is again, whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me, and he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.

Judas, not Judas Iscariot, said to him, Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us and not to the world? Jesus answered him, If anyone loves me, he will keep my word. You seeing a recurring theme here, right? He will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.

What a beautiful picture of the relationship God wants to have with you.

If you keep His word, if you obey Him, Jesus and God the Father are going to love you. They’re going to make their home with you. He goes on. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words, and the word that you hear is not mine, but the Father’s who sent me.

Do you know what I get out of this passage?

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We talk about different love languages, right? I don’t know if you’ve ever read the book, The Five Love Languages. It really helps you in marriage, if you haven’t, to understand that people communicate and hear love in different ways. For some people, words, especially words of affirmation, express love. And when that that kind of person is told, I love you, I really believe in you, I so appreciate you doing this and that and the other.

It just fills up their love tank. Other people, it’s acts of service that express their love. And so when someone does things for them or helps around the house or whatever, their love tank is filled up. And if you aren’t communicating in the person’s love language, it may be yours, but they’re not hearing. I love you because you’re not doing it in the way that means something to them.

This passage says to me that God’s love language is obedience.

Right, His love language is obedience, and what this says to us from what Jesus says, is that the commands that are in the Bible are simply descriptions of how to love God. When Jesus said the greatest commandment, he said the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. The second is to love your neighbor as yourself, and that these two commandments actually sum up the whole of Scripture.

The Bible is just there to tell you how to love God, and the one who enables you to live that out is the Holy Spirit, according to Jesus in this passage.

So as you think about your life, don’t just think about God’s commandments and expectations as restrictions on you. No, think of them as descriptions of how to love God in a way that is meaningful to Him. Today, how can you love God by obeying His commands?

I’m John North.

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