Quotes About Obedience

No, we are not defeated; we are simply disobedient! It might be good if we stopped using the terms 'victory' and 'defeat' to describe our progress in holiness. Rather we should use the terms 'obedience' and 'disobedience.

In fact, there is no such thing as grudging obedience. For an action to be truly obedient to God, it must be done from a motivation of genuine love and gratitude to Him.

Only conduct arising from love is worthy of the name obedience.

God has called every Christian to a holy life. There are no exceptions to this call. It

The experience of holiness is not a gift we receive like justification, but something which we are clearly exhorted to work at.

Why did Rehoboam make such a foolish decision? The Scripture says, "So the king did not listen to the people, for this turn of events was from the LORD, to fulfill the word the LORD had spoken" (1 Kings 12:15). Two foolish decisions were made, in two instances good advice was rejected and harmful or foolish advice was followed. Both instances are attributed to the sovereign work of God guiding the minds of the kings to accomplish His will.

God wants us to walk in obedience - not victory. Obedience is oriented toward God; victory is oriented toward self. This may seem to be merely splitting hairs over semantics, but there's a subtle, self-centered attitude at the root of many of our difficulties with sin. Until we deal with this attitude, we won't consistently walk in holiness.

Our good works are not truly good unless they're motivated by a love for God and a desire to glorify Him. But we cannot have such a Godward motivation if we think we must earn God's favor by our obedience or if we fear we may forfeit His favor by disobedience. Such a works-oriented motivation is essentially self-serving, prompted more by what we think we gain or lose than by a grateful response to the grace He has already given us through Jesus Christ.

Matthew Henry says that to walk with God is "to set God always before us, and to act as those that are always under his eye. It is to live a life of communion with God both in ordinances and providences. It is to make God's word our rule and his glory our end in all our actions."5

The only safe evidence that we are in Christ is a holy life. John

If we think about it, we realize that obedience that is not delighted in is not perfect obedience.

The Scriptures never indicate that God is frustrated to any degree by our failure to act as we should.

We might agree with what the Bible says about a certain sin, "and even make a commitment of sorts to put it out of our lives…..We would like to be rid of that sin, and even pray to God to take it away, but are we willing to say no to it?

His agenda for our lives that God will guard, protect, and advance. We must learn to live by His agenda if we are to trust Him.

if we want to live less stressful lives, we must learn to live with a single agenda: God's agenda.

We must learn to live by His agenda if we are to trust Him.

Some of the Corinthian Christians persisted in disobedience to the point where God had to take their lives (1 Corinthians 11:30).

the pursuit of holiness is a joint venture between God and the Christian.

The reality, though, is that our very best efforts at following his example are always imperfect and defiled by our sinful nature. By contrast, his obedience was always perfect and complete and never defiled. Therefore, we should always look first at what Jesus did as our representative before looking at him as our example.

God wants us to walk in obedience—not victory.

I realized anew that, just as we must learn to obey God one choice at a time, we must also learn to trust God one circumstance at a time. Trusting God is not a matter of my feelings but of my will. I never feel like trusting God when adversity strikes, but I can choose to do so even when I don't feel like it. That act of the will, though, must be based on belief, and belief must be based on truth.

Our motive for obedience is just as important, probably more so, to God than the level of our performance. A person who struggles with some persistent sin but does so out of love for God is more pleasing to Him than the person who has no such struggle but is proud of his or her self-control. Of course, the person who obeys from a motive of love will be concerned about his or her performance. There will be a sincere desire and an earnest effort to please God in every area of life.

That's another step forward in creating a nation of sheep in a totalitarian state, saying, "Yes sir, yes sir! Is that what you want? Do it to me again!" By the time they graduate, kids won't even know they have rights. They'll be little stooges for a fascist state.

We shouldn't make requests of God to try to prove that He is listening and that He loves us. We should make our requests because He is listening and He loves us. Faith is not the same as assuming that even if we disobey God, He will do for us whatever we want. Faith is claiming God's promises and seeing our lives change with His power.