1 John 5:3 “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous.”

There is no need to doubt, wonder, invent or be fooled about what loving God looks like… for the Bible says that loving God (and loving others for that matter) is keeping his commandments …“this is the love of God”.

… Quite simply, if you love God, you will love to obey God. No ifs, buts or maybes. But is this at your heart?

It was at Abraham’s heart, and he is called “the father of faith”. Turns out obedience and faith go together! Remembering, it was because of Abraham’s obedience to God’s word, and that “to the nth degree” (just read Genesis 22!) that the promises of God were made sure to him “because thou hast obeyed my voice”.

Everyone says they love God with their mouth, but it’s in obedience or disobedience to God’s word that it is proven or disproven “My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth”.

Maybe you forever excuse your bad attitude to obeying God’s word, and the inconvenient truth of your disobedience, upon such an excuse as “you don’t know my heart”. I used that a few times too in my past! And in a sense that’s true… but Jesus taught our actions flow from and prove what’s in our heart. If you disobey God, there’s no mystique or inarticulate-able deeper truth to understand… just call sin for what it is.

Don’t be offended, the truth is good for us all. I most definitely need it too! Look, God needs to break through our hard hearts all, and when he does break through finally, you’d realize truly as the verse says that “his commandments are not grievous”.

Let’s go back to God’s picture book in the Old Testament, and in 1 Samuel, God sought a man after his own heart, when he removed Saul from being the captain and leader of his people.

And why did he remove Saul? Quite simply, because Saul did not keep his commandments, and that because he did not love God.

Saul’s first disobedience came when the prophet Samuel told him that when he was at Gilgal, he was to wait for Samuel “till I come to thee, and shew thee what thou shalt do”. But Saul did not wait for Samuel and disobeyed God, and because of situations and circumstances he himself decided what was best to do. He obviously was like a lot of modern Christian attitudes to God’s word, God doesn’t mean what he says, and his word changes with the times… it hadn’t. And disobedience is still costly to all our lives. How many of us stop waiting on God despite what he said because of <insert reason here>.

Then the second disobedience, Saul was told to “go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not”… Saul disobeyed this too. Sure he went to battle, but then the Bible says he decided what to kill and what to save alive. Saul was like many Christians today, they know what’s right and wrong more than what God does, hiding it behind religious nobility as he did too. We can tuck our disobedient heart away quite neatly can’t we, bold enough to cloak it in the most fervent praise and worship, as he did.

Look, we are all guilty of being such crooks with God’s grace and disobeying him so insistently and repeatedly, so thank God so much for his lovingkindness and mercy to us… but there should be a person in us who wants to and does obey God! If you fell down you’d get straight back on the horse! But fact is, the antichrist spirit is strong in our times, as the Bible says. Because you’re not meant to be on the throne, because you’re not God, but if you truly think you love more than God loves, and you know right and wrong more than God says it is… you have the spirit of antichrist, and the spirit of disobedience, which was meant to be solved when the Spirit of Christ came into your heart at salvation.

There are many things in life God will tell you to do, and maybe he’ll show you the wisdom of why then and there or later on when you can handle it, because “wisdom is too high for a fool” and we are all clueless and fools without Christ. But in the meantime, like Abraham, when God’s word commands you, not inviting your counsel but only requiring your obedience, you can choose to obey or disobey, that is your luxury for now… but not without consequence.

Obedience is so important, and it truly is reflective of who’s child we really are. Sons of God do obey God. Because they love him and want to. In Genesis 4, Cain offers to God, so he was “serving God”. You’d think he was a child of God when he brings lavish gifts and presents of praise and worship to God, here I am God! But in as basic a Bible story as you can get, though he offers to God, he is actually not of God at all, in fact the Bible says later on that he “was of that wicked one”. You can be a child of the devil and in church doing the religious deal. Cain had the spirit of disobedience!

God graciously said to Cain… “If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted?” See, rather than getting mad at God and people obeying God’s word like Cain did… you could just do right? Is it that hard? But if obeying God’s word seems so hardly for you… maybe you need to check your salvation. We all need to.

Doing right doesn’t make you a Pharisee, it’s what every Christian is called to … “Little children, let no man deceive you: he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous.”

Obeying God will always be doing the right thing. But before you do that, you will have to forsake your own righteousness. See, Saul and Cain had something in common, they both had not forsaken their own righteousness yet. That’s why they disobeyed God… because they were not convinced that God was right, as you perhaps haven’t been yet either. They thought Saul was godly “Is Saul also among the prophets?”, but his heart was far from God.

A big old barrier to obedience in each of our lives is being personally convinced that God’s word is right and you are not. If it’s any consolation, none of us are right, as the scripture says “all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags”. But you can exchange those rags for Christ’s fine linen anytime you want, in fact you will need to before you die, or you’ll be unrighteous for all eternity, and the clock isn’t ticking backwards, only forwards towards the judgment seat which will sit, whether you want to think about it and prepare for it or not.

Could you ever be someone who obeys God, not because you have to but because you want to? That’d truly be a work of God in our hearts indeed don’t you think!… because it goes against everything our flesh is… but is exactly what the Spirit of God in us will produce “And hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us”.

… Our Saviour obeyed his Father, even unto death, because he truly loved him. May God birth this true sincere love for God and others in our lives also.

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