The Gift of Obedience, A Gift Or A Curse?

You know during my reconversion process I read constantly. My favorite books were easily the detailed lives of the saints. You just wanted to know why they were Saints and what made them holy. I could not believe how obedient these Saints were, even to the point of thinking it was ridiculousness. I asked the Lord an honest question. "Why, are they so obedient? What's the big deal?"

He answered with scripture!

The Gift of Obedience, A Gift Or A Curse?

Dt 7: 9-11
Understand, then, that the LORD, your God, is God indeed,
the faithful God who keeps his merciful covenant
down to the thousandth generation
toward those who love him and keep his commandments,
but who repays with destruction a person who hates him;
he does not dally with such a one,
but makes them personally pay for it.
You shall therefore carefully observe the commandments,
the statutes and the decrees that I enjoin on you today."

God indeed answered with scripture. Have you ever read the Psalms while looking for examples of the importance of obedience? Ultimately, He told me disobedience is a sin resulting in severe punishment and obedience is rewarded to 1000th degree. Duh! I already knew the answer, God just showed me how serious He is about this beautiful gift of obedience.

Here is your little secret to grow in love with the gift of obedience. Remember your thesaurus when reading scripture! Simple enough? Look for words like listen, do, command, follow, obey, submit, yield, surrender, mind, observe, attend, heed, watch, abide, regard, etc...

Did you know the number of times the following words are in scripture?

obey, 178
obedience, 17
follow, 357
abide, 62
command, 1194
commandments, 193
listen, 223
submit, 9
heed, 163
observe, 103
surrender, 19
regard, 108
yield, 75

Go forth my friend, to love and obey the Lord, our God!
Amen.