Out o' th' Bushes

Obey. Obedience. Surrender. To overcome all the problems, the difficulties, the insurmountable obstacles in you life, you must focus on the solution, not on the problem; and the only solution is Jesus. You must focus on Jesus. You must immerse yourself in the Word of God, in the relationship of daily prayer and meditation with Jesus; at every turn, at every threat to your peace and stability you must focus yourself on drawing closer to Jesus, on surrendering yourself more to Jesus, on spending more time concentrating every fiber of your being on Him. You don't really have much choice. Nothing else works. You've already tried all the other stuff and you're still in the same fix as before, 'cept maybe worse. Jesus is the only solution that works.

True obedience is to completely surrender to the will of God for you. To say, "I'm making a deal with You, Lord. I'll do whatever you want me to, and You can do whatever You want to with me." This is a minute by minute commitment. This is getting up every morning and saying, "OK Lord, I'm ready. Tell me where you want me to go today. Show me the people you want me to talk to today. Let me see the adventure of Your Presence in my life, in my comings and goings. I do not have a plan. I do not have an agenda. I do not have a preconceived notion about how I'm supposed to look or act. 'As the servants eye is on the hand of his Master, so is my heart stayed on You.' (Psalm 123:2) As You show me Your will, I will follow."

True obedience lies in doing what the verse says, "Walk not after the sinful nature, but walk after the Spirit." (Romans 8:1-4) That's obedience.

Obedience is saying yes when God tells you something to do (in an immediate sense). "If you love me you'll keep my commandments; and this is my commandment, that you love one another." I cannot do right by myself. I can only do right as I surrender and trust God to work His will in me. Only as I die to myself, and let Jesus live His life in me, can I live up to His standard, which is, "Be ye perfect (whole, entire, lacking nothing), even as your Father in heaven is perfect." So how do we get ourselves away from this willful disobedience? We don't; we can't. What is it Paul says? "Who will deliver me from this wretched man that I am?" (Romans 7:23-25) You only get one guess. God. And if God is so hard on willful disobedience, why would He even consider delivering such jerks as us? Because He wants to. And what will persuade Him to do it? Nothing except our accepting His gift, completely surrendering ourselves to Him, daily, and letting Him live His eternal life in us. That is the only way we’ll ever achieve obedience that will satisfy God. Whoever is willing to die to himself (surrender) daily is the one who is being obedient. Quit trying to get your way, and let Jesus live in you so He can have His way with you and with those around you. It's a daily act of surrender; of humbling yourself; of giving plumb up.

Paul says in Romans 6:16, "Don't you know that to whoever you present [surrender] yourselves to obey, you are that one's slaves, whether to sin [of the devil] leading to death, or of obedience [to God] leading to righteousness. "Don't you get it? If you surrender to sin, you get enslaved by the devil, and it leads to death." "But, if you surrender to [be obedient to] God, it leads to righteousness which is life." You get to choose.

So obedience must be about having your heart right. And how do you do that again? You humble yourself, you surrender to Jesus, and you trust Him, and His Spirit comes into your heart. Your ole heart just can't get any more all right than that.

It's not all of a sudden; it sorta comes on you slow, when you're not expecting it; you see these little signs of the Holy Spirit moving in your heart, doing things in your life, making things happen that you never thought possible. And that is what obedience is about. Obedience is when God does it IN YOU! It’s when the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus begins to SET YOU FREE from the law of sin and death, and you can feel it and see it and know that it's happening in your very own personal heart and soul and body.

So Paul says, "Let that attitude; let that kind of obedience be in you." (Phil. 2:5) Of course the obedience is not just in saying the right words, but in doing the right thing. And the right thing is in surrendering to God's will, surrendering to the troops of the Sanhedrin, surrendering to the Elders, and the Pharisees and the Saducees, surrendering to the beatings, and the mockings, and the crown of thorns, and doing it with the right attitude; the attitude of surrender; like it says in Isaiah 53, "He was led as a Lamb to the slaughter, and He opened not His mouth." (Isaiah 53:7) The only way we will be able to stand is if we are totally surrendered to Jesus so that His Holy Spirit so fills us that it is He who is doing the standing; it is He who is doing the enduring; it is He who is doing the obeying; 'cause I'm pretty certain that we can't possibly do things like that under our own power. Thank God we don't have to do something like that by ourselves, without Him being right there with us.