Disobedience Has Consequences

Disobedience Has Consequences

Jeremiah 7:13-15
"And now, because you have done all these things,' declares the Lord, "and I spoke to you, rising up early and speaking, but you did not hear, and I called you but you did not answer, therefore, . . . I will cast you out of My sight . . ."

Remember Lot's Wife

While God was gracious enough to rescue her from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, she dared to look back, and lost her life because of it. Her looking back was a sign of dissatisfaction with what God had provided. She was willing to obey Him, but she still had a place in her heart for her old sinful life. This is a slap in God's face, and in a way, a rejection of Him and of the salvation He was offering to her. We need to obey Him, and be happy with it, because He truly has our best interests at heart, and our circumstances will always be better when we choose to follow His commands.

Sometimes, we don't obey Him because it will make us uncomfortable
In the first four verses of 2 Timothy chapter 4, Paul warns Timothy, a young church leader, to preach the truth, even if the recipients of the message don't want to hear it. In verse three, he says: "For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires; and will turn away their ears from the truth . . . "

Paul obviously is implying that these believers who want their ears tickled are not pleasing God, and if you and I truly wish to please God, we need to be willing to hear Him speak, even if He is speaking through a fellow believer, and even if it hurts to hear it. The truth of the matter is that God never called us to be comfortable. According to 2 Corinthians 4-5, any comfort we get comes from Him. We are called to glorify Him with our lives, a task which will often require us to step out of our comfort zones.

Experiencing Him should cause us to want to obey Him
Peter was an apostle who, as you may know, messed up several times during the time Jesus was walking the earth. He cut off a guard's ear. He lost faith while walking on water, and had to be rescued by Jesus' hand. And, of course, he denied association with Jesus just before the Crucifixion. When listing all of Peter's bonehead moves, however, it is interesting to note that none of them occur after the Resurrection. That is, once Peter had seen the risen Christ, he was all of a sudden able to keep his eye on the prize. He had singleness of purpose, and could no longer let his own will get in the way of doing God's will.

If you have a difficult time obeying the Lord's voice, you should consider that maybe you have not really experienced Him. Not that you aren't saved, but that you haven't been in a place where you truly connected with God. Once you have, you will never be the same, and obedience will come easier for you, just as it did for Peter. The idea of how to cross this line is beyond the scope of this little lesson, but I recommend Henry Blackaby's book Experiencing God for more on this.