Topic: Discipline
Since Adam and Eve decided to disobey God’s command, many people have been experienced problems and pains in their lives. Throughout the Old Testament, many people of decided to follow their own way to living life. Because of their decisions, God let them have their way, with many consequences in their lives. As a result, they realized what they were doing was wrong and decided to follow God’s way of living.
Why do we need to obey God? Do we need to obey all the biblical laws of God? There are at least 613 laws that God established in the Bible; how can we keep those 613 laws? God knows that we are imperfect that we cannot keep the Ten Commandments perfectly. We cannot keep all the 613 laws that God established for us to learn and obey. We have a hard time hearing and obeying God’s voice because of our sins.
So what do we do now? How can we have God in our lives again? Is there a simple law that we can keep?
If one of us seriously desires to have that relationship with God again, first, we need to repent of our sins and ask God for forgiveness. Although many TV evangelists use the “sinner prayer” as a repentance formula, there is no certain prayer in the Bible that we need to follow to pray. It is up to us individually alone to repent and ask God for forgiveness of our sins. Then, we may accept God as our Savior and follow what God says to us to do. If He says to enjoy going to the church, we may decide to go there. One thing God cannot do for us is make a decision for us.
We all have the freedom to live in this planet. God created us to have the freedom of choice. God didn’t make us robots that we cannot make our own decisions. Look at Abraham in Genesis 22; God called Abraham to sacrifice his own son Isaac as an offering to Him. It was hard for Abraham to obey God because he loved and had compassion for this young boy. But Abraham decided to obey God rather than following his own feeling; God blessed him and provided a ram, instead of Isaac, as his offering to the Lord. Because of his faithfulness and obedience, Abraham was included in the “Hall of Faith,” which is recorded in Hebrews 11.
God commands us to obey His voice because being obedient will lead us to greater things that we can’t imagine. Proverbs 3:5-6 says, “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. 6 In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” If we want our dreams to come true, we first must acknowledge our Heavenly Father and seek Him before we ask Him for anything else. Jeremiah 29:11 said that God already knows what He wants to give us. Before He would like to give something to us, He would like to know that we have not neglected Him. The only way He knows that we can be trusted is if we make right choices and obey His command while we are living in this present age.
Of course, God knows that we cannot keep all 613 laws or even the first Ten Commandments. Instead, He gives only one law for us to keep. That is, love one another as our Heavenly Father loves us. If we love each another, we are doing more than just obeying the first Ten Commandments. We are fulfilling all the 613 laws if we obey one simple law that Jesus gives us to do.
Why is it love and not the first ten laws? I John 4 tells us that God is love and He loves and cares for us. John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Romans 8:38-39 tells that there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Jesus also says that if we love Him, we need to obey His command. If we love Him and refuse to follow His command, it means that we do not love Jesus at all. This applies to human relationships as well.
God chose His Son, Jesus, to be a sacrificial offering for our sins. Throughout the Gospels, we see that Jesus was fully obedient to His Father. Even though He knew that many of His people would reject Him as their Messiah, He refused to disobey His Father’s will. Why? Jesus knew that His people didn’t know what they were doing to God.
Today, there are few people who choose to obey God and follow Him. Jesus tells us that there would be few who will make it to Heaven (Matthew 7:13-14), because only few have accepted Him and follow through His way of living. That’s why James warns that having faith but not showing our work is considered spiritually dead (James 2:14-26)—separation from God.
In addition to obeying God, we need to obediently love people. The last six commandments of the Ten Commandments are laws that are related to people. If we decide to not showing any respect to people, we are neglecting them as our guests, friends, business partners, or neighbors. Not do only we make them to feel unwelcome, we are breaking our loving relationship with Jesus Christ as well. But God says that we need to show respect to people by listening to them or have communication with them. It’s another way to be obedient. Also, we need to love them as our Heavenly Father loves us.
We cannot have faith in God unless we show respect to God and people. We can obey all the laws in the Bible, but remain unhappy in our lives. We can become a multimillionaire, but money doesn’t satisfy our needs. To satisfy our need, we need to establish a relationship with God and people through obedience.
Today, the divorce rate is high within families, because they disagree with each other and with God. They haven’t established good foundation of relationship. Many young people decide to go astray from their family by disobeying their parents. Many marriages have broken because the husband and wife don’t show any respect to each other. Most of them are from Christian homes.
To have success in life and marriage, we need to respect people; but mostly, we need to fully follow God’s instructions in our lives. It is up to us to make that decision.
