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Obedience From The Heart

Jordan Wilson. Sunday May 21st, 2017. Obedience From The Heart We are only able to worship when we’ve accepted Him as savior AND see Him as sovereign over us. We are only able to worship based on what we know about God. We all vary in our knowledge of God as revealed in scripture. God will only reveal Himself more when we are willing to worship and obey what we DO know. (Ex 15 ppl). Focusing on fear, obsessions, worries, & doubts leads to ingratitude, frustration, feeling useless, and without purpose. Worship is about giving from the heart, serving from the heart, and obeying God from the heart, not about what we can get from Him. Focusing the heart on Him leads to gratitude and fulfillment. The way a man perceives himself, his world, and his God determines how he will behave. What you believe about those three things, the environment you put yourself in, and the relationships you have with God and people, will determine what you will become. Satan attacks at the point in which he knows we are supposed to be obedient. A well-trained conscience, the Holy Spirit’s drawing, and direct instruction from scripture are indicators of where God wants US to be obedient. Satan is attacking you at the points in which he knows you MOST need to obey God, serve God, and give to God. And it all has to do with what you believe to be true about God. Genesis 3:4, Genesis 4:2-7, Daniel 10:12, Matthew 4:1-11 Genesis 3:4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” All temptations deal with satan playing on our fears & obsessions about losing something we think we deserve. The sin was not as much about the act as it was the desire… the desire was solidified by the act. (James 1:14-15) For Adam and Eve, it was that God was withholding good from them. Genesis 4:2-7 “2b Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil. 3 In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord. 4 And Abel also brought an offering - fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, 5 but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry and his face was downcast. Genesis 4:6-7 “Then the Lord said to Cain, ‘Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? 7 If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.” Cain believed he deserved more from God. He responded to God with ingratitude, frustration, and feeling useless and therefore put himself in the house of temptation, where sin crouched at the door. Cain refused to empty himself and obey from the heart. Matthew 4:1-11 With the incarnate Christ, it was to see if Christ would gain “what he deserved”. “Since you are the Son of God”. The attempted temptations were presumptions by satan. If Jesus feared or believed His Father was withholding good from him, and His desire to do God’s will was corrupted, He would have given in to the acts. But Jesus emptied Himself. (Phil. 2:5-11) Daniel was in a time of great perplexity, anxious thoughts, mourning, he didn’t eat, and had no idea what God was doing behind the scenes. Daniel 10:12-14 “12 Then he continued, ‘Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them. 13 But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, because I was detained there with the king of Persia. 14 Now I have come to explain to you what will happen to your people in the future…” This is the cosmic battle of control. Are we all prone to obsession? If our brain (fleshly nature) is prone to obsession, as believers, is it possible that we can choose what we obsess about? YES. How? With what we decide the heart. The heart of Paul towards God Romans 11:33-12:2 Romans 11:33-36 “33 Oh, how great are God’s riches and wisdom and knowledge! How impossible it is for us to understand his decisions and his ways! 34 For who can know the Lord’s thoughts? Who knows enough to give him advice? 35 And who has given him so much that he needs to pay it back? 36 For everything comes from him and exists by his power and is intended for his glory. All glory to him forever! Amen.” Romans 12:1-2 “1 And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice - the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. 2 Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.” I. We Obey Because Of God’s Riches, Wisdom, Knowledge, and Mercy. Romans 11:33-34 “33 Oh, how great are God’s riches and wisdom and knowledge! How impossible it is for us to understand his decisions and his ways! 34 For who can know the Lord’s thoughts? Who knows enough to give him advice? A. This outburst of praise to God comes out of a more rich understanding of God. Romans 11:33-36 was a natural explosion of praise to the previous 11 chapters of Romans. B. The more we humbly accept God’s word, the more God will reveal His purpose to us. Dan. 10:12 “Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard” II. We Obey Because Everything Was Intended For His Glory. Romans 11:35 “And who has given him so much that he needs to pay it back? 36 For everything comes from him and exists by his power and is intended for his glory. All glory to him forever! Amen.” A. In order to set your heart to willful obedience to Him, we must understand that satan’s scheme is to get you to believe that everything you possess is yours. And that you deserve more. More time, more money, more peace, more security, more possessions, more health, less trials, less struggle… III. We obey because we have nothing to offer. Romans 12:1 “1 And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice - the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. A. “Bodies” - “So’-mah” GK. in the context of being a slave. Or, offered in slavery. Romans 6:16 “16 Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves to the ones you obey…” B. We may be free to choose what we obey, but we are slaves to that which we choose. Submitting whole-heartedly to God leads to freedom from bondage. Submitting to temptation, fear, obsession, doubt, worry, etc leads to self-imposed guilt, shame, and regret. Our actions will always follow our beliefs. IV. We Obey because all He’s already done for us. Romans 12:1 “because all He has done for you.” “The Mercies Of God” found in Romans. God’s Love, Unable to be separated (from God’s love), Grace, the Holy Spirit, Peace, Patience, Glory, Honor, Righteousness, Justification, Forgiveness, Reconciliation, Adoption and recognition as children, Cry out to God in trouble, Security, Safety, Intercession, Eternal Life, Comfort of the Spirit, And the list goes on…. V. We Obey because God is changing what we believe about what is Good, Perfect, and Pleasing. Romans 12:2 Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.” A. We can’t know what is good, pleasing, and perfect without knowing God intimately. An intimate knowledge of God causes us to explode with praise and ultimately - obedience will flow from it. We fail to experience it when we set our hearts to focus on anything less that the infinite love and knowledge of Him. “When He [God] talks of humans losing their selves, He means only abandoning the clamour of self-will (control); once they have done that, He really gives them back all their personality, and boasts (I am afraid, sincerely) that when they are wholly His they will be more themselves than ever.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters “Be not deceived, Wormwood, our cause is never more in jeopardy than when a human, no longer desiring but still intending to do God’s will, looks round upon a universe in which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters We are only able to worship when we’ve accepted Him as savior AND see Him as sovereign over us. We are only able to worship based on what we know about God. We all vary in our knowledge of God as revealed in scripture. God will only reveal Himself more when we are willing to worship and obey what we DO know. (Ex 15 ppl). Focusing on fear, obsessions, worries, & doubts leads to ingratitude, frustration, feeling useless, and without purpose. Worship is about giving from the heart, serving from the heart, and obeying God from the heart, not about what we can get from Him. Focusing the heart on Him leads to gratitude and fulfillment.
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