Obedience

I have been learning a lot about obedience lately. I desire so badly to hear from God, to be in step with the Spirit each moment of every day. I pray that God would speak to me and direct me in which way to go.

I've been thinking about 1 Samuel 15 a lot lately. God told Saul to "go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction ALL THAT THEY HAVE. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey." v3

So Saul went and did what God commanded.. for the most part. He spared the best of the animals. His intent was to "spare the best of the sheep and of the oxen to sacrifice to the Lord your God, and the rest we have devoted to destruction." v15

How often do we do that? God commands us to do something, we do it partially and for the rest we put some "christian excuse" on why we didn't completely obey.

"Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams." v22

God desires complete and utter obedience. That is what pleases him. That is such a hard concept for me to get my head around. Lets say that God calls me to move to Haiti. If I decided that it would be too hard and didn't go, but rather decided to support a bunch of missionaries finically, I would not be pleasing to him. God desires obedience. OR lets say that I do move. I sell all of my possessions, go into a foreign land, leave behind family, friends, comfort, everything and go God would be pleased. But what pleases him isn't the sacrifices that it would take to obey him, rather the simple obedience. The size of the sacrifice is a measurement for us to see our level of commitment but it is not a leveraging tool to please God. God is only pleased by obedience.

I've been reading the book "Hinds Feet for High Places". It is SO good. Here is a quote from it that relates..

"Whenever you are willing to obey me, Much-Afriad, and to follow the path of my choice, you will always be able to hear and recognize my voice, and when you hear it you must always obey. Remember also that it is always safe to obey my voice, even if it seems to call you to paths which look impossible or even crazy."

Dang! It has been a heck of a long time since I have blogged. Well.. I'm going to see if I can start up again. I got a new job that will allow me more time to do things like this.. so we'll have to see how it goes :).

I have been thinking about Psalm 86:11 a lot lately.

"Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth; unite my heart to fear your name." I love that! Some other versions say "give me an undivided heart so that I may fear your name." Jesus, that is my prayer for the rest of my life. That I would have an undivided heart, that my King alone would have my heart, my desires, my passions, my joys. EVEYTHING. So, that is why I decided to change the title of this blog.

As I was praying that this morning, this song "One pure and holy passion" came into my head. This is my prayer..

"Give me one pure and holy passion

Give me one magnificent obsession
Give me one glorious ambition for my life
To know and follow hard after you
To know and follow hard after you
To grow as your disciple in the truth
This world is empty, pale, and poor
Compared to knowing you my Lord
Lead me on and I will run after you"

THE VISION

I got this from KBs blog.. and LOVED it :). Enjoy!



THE VISION
FROM RED MOON RISING
by Pete Grieg

So this guy comes up to me and says, “What’s the vision? What’s the big idea?”
I open up my mouth and the words come out like this:

The vision?
The vision is Jesus:
obsessively, dangerously, undeniably Jesus.

The vision is of an army of young people.
You see bones?
I see an army.

And they are free from materialism—
They laugh at nine-to-five little prisons.
They could eat caviar on Monday and crusts on Tuesday.
They wouldn’t even notice.
They know the meaning of the Matrix, the way the West was won.

They are mobile like the wind.
They belong to the nations.
They need no passport.
People write their addresses in pencil and wonder at their strange existence.
They are free yet they are slaves of the hurting, dirty and dying.

What is the vision?
The vision is holiness that hurts the eyes.
It makes children laugh and adults angry.
It gave up the game of minimal integrity long ago to reach for the stars.
It scorns the good and strains for the best.
It is dangerously pure.

Light flickers from every secret motive, from every conversation.
It loves people away from their suicide leaps—their Satan games.This is an army that would lay down its life for the cause.
A million times a day, its soldiers choose to lose that they might one day win the great “well done” of faithful sons and daughters.

Such heroes are as radical on Monday morning as Sunday night.

They don’t need fame from names.
Instead they grin quietly upwards and hear the crowds chanting again and again: “COME ON!”
And this is the sound of the underground, the whisper of history in the making, foundations shaking, revolutionaries dreaming once again.
Mystery is scheming in whispers, conspiracy is breathing…
This is the sound of the underground.

And the army is disciple(in)ed—
Young people who beat their bodies into submission.
Every soldier would take a bullet for his comrade at arms.
The tattoo on their back boasts “for me to live is Christ and to die is gain.”

Sacrifice fuels the fire of victory in their upward eyes.
Winners.
Martyrs.
Who can stop them?
Can hormones hold them back?
Can failure succeed?
Can fear scare them or death kill them?

And the generation prays like a dying man with groans beyond talking, with warrior cries, sulfuric tears and great barrow loads of laughter!

Waiting.
Watching.
24-7-365.

Whatever it takes they will give:
Breaking the rules,
Shaking mediocrity from its cozy little hide,
Laying down their rights and their precious little wrongs,
Laughing at labels,
Fasting essentials.
The advertisers cannot mold them.
Peer-pressure is powerless to shake their resolve at late-night parties before the cockerel cries.

They are incredibly cool, dangerously attractive on the inside.
On the outside?
They hardly care!
They wear clothes like costumes: to communicate and celebrate, but never to hide.

Would they surrender their image or their popularity?
They would lay down their lives, swap seats with the man on death row, guilty as hell: a throne of an electric chair.

With blood and sweat and many tears, with sleepless nights and fruitless days, they pray as if it all depends on God and live as though it all depends on them.

Their DNA chooses Jesus.
He breathes out.
They breathe in.
Their subconscious sings.
They had a blood transfusion with Jesus.

Their words make demons scream in shopping malls.
Don’t you hear them coming?

Herald the weirdoes!
Summon the losers and the freaks.
Here come the frightened and forgotten with fire in their eyes!
They walk tall and trees applaud.
Skyscrapers bow.
Mountains are dwarfed by these children of another dimension.

Their prayers summon the Hound of Heaven and evoke the dream of Eden.

And, this vision will be.
It will come to pass.
It will come easily.
It will come soon.

How do I know?
Because, this is the longing of creation itself, the groaning of the spirit, the very dream of God.

My tomorrow is His today.
My distant hope is His 3-D.
And, my feeble, whispered, faithless prayer invokes a thunderous, resounding, bone-shaking, great “AMEN!” from countless angels, from heroes of the faith, from Christ himself.

And He is the original dreamer, the ultimate winner.
Guaranteed.