Faith Is Obedience
Don’t try to tell the world you love Jesus while not obeying Him. Jesus said, “If you love Me you will obey Me” (John 14: 15).
He then made a statement of confirmation: “He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him” (John 14:21).
Jesus made it clear. If we love Him we obey Him. If you are not obeying Him you don’t love Him no matter how loudly you profess that you love Him. He made it clear, didn’t He? Conversely, our obedience of Him reveals we love Him.
Faith is obedience. You are walking in the way if you obey His instructions.
A 20th Century example is Corrie ten Boom. She lived through the worst Satan could hurl at her. In a Nazi concentration camp she saw her family tortured, starved, and killed. She survived through a clerical error. Yet, through all of her anguish, misery, torment and pain she was obedient to God and strong in her faith.
Her obedience under those extenuating circumstances, like that of many others, may be explained by this statement found on one of the walls in a German concentration camp:
“I believe in the sun, even when it isn’t shining.
I believe in love, even when I feel it not.
I believe in God, even when He is silent.”
The way is not a process but a person. Once we have chosen Him as our way to life we must make Him our way of life and not turn back.
The Mexican General Santa Anna forced Sam Houston and his rag tag army into an area of near impossibility. Defeat seemed imminent to many. To Houston’s back was the river. To his fore the army of Santa Anna. He called his aid, Deaf Smith, and ordered him to burn the bridge across the river. Deaf protested that it was the only way out for them. Houston replied, “We ain’t going out that way, burn the bridge.” With that resolution he was committed to one way and offered no alternative. Do you have some bridges you need to burn to evidence your total dependence on Jesus?
Older theologians described saving faith in three words:
NOTITIA = knowledge.
ASSENSUS = intellectual assent.
FIDUCIA = a trust of personal commitment.
How can you know you are doing the right thing? Proverbs 10: 17 answers, “He is in the way of life that keeps instruction.”
Pray with the Psalmist, “Teach me your way, I will walk in truths” (Psalm 86: 11).