Sometimes having a picture of a biblical concept in your mind can be immensely helpful. For example, most of us as believers agree that obeying God's word is a terrific idea. However, if were very honest about it, sometimes the idea of obeying God's word seems awfully abstract. Sometimes is difficult to wrap your mind around whether you've actually obeyed God were not. I was praying and meditating on God's word during my devotional time one morning, and I believe that God gave me a picture of obedience, which I literally drew in my diary. I found it helpful for myself, so I decided to pass it on to you. I hope it solidifies the concept for you as it did for me. If it doesn't, remember that we all learn differently, so put it on the shelf in case some friend or neighbor may need it. God be with you.
The idea behind this model is that there are some key aspects to solid Biblical Obedience. They involve the following:
The Written Word: That is the Bible; the rightly divided correctly interpreted written Scripture from Genesis to Revelation.
The Incarnate Word: that is Jesus Christ; What He said, His mindset and values, His teachings and His deeds or actions (1 John 2:6).
The Breathed Word: that's the Holy Spirit working the word into us, through us and then out of us into other people's lives or our external situation. Trying to obey God's Word without the coinciding work of the Holy Spirit is dead works, but trying to obey the Holy Spirit without respecting both the written and incarnate Word along with it is equally deadly because it leads to deception. You could easily start out thinking you're following the Holy Spirit, and wind up following an imitation or counterfeit without realizing it, unless you are regularly comparing what you believe you're hearing with God's written Word and precepts, and matching it with Christ's examples.
Obedience: True godly and Biblical obedience therefore is that point where my life properly intersects with the three lines of the Written Scriptures, the life and teachings of Jesus who is God's word made flesh, and the Holy Spirit, who breathed the Word in the first place. Whenever my thoughts, desires, motives, attitudes, words, and behaviors properly intersect with those other three lines, that's what it looks like to be obedient as God defines the term Biblically. True biblical obedience than is hearing and respecting the whole written word, and obeying it as it was exemplified in modeled by Jesus Christ, and doing it all under the power of the Holy Spirit. When my life properly intersects with those three , then I am truly obedient.
May Almighty God be with you and bless you , amen .
Brother Michel Lankford
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