Be The Obedient

John 14:15 "If you love Me [Jesus], keep my commandments."

As a child growing up, I remember my sisters often times getting into fights with my mother. I'm sure from time to time as I grew up in the adolescent years, I did the same, but there was a line that I remember my sisters using quite often.

The line was simply, "I don't love you anymore!"

This statement was usually made after my mother instructed my sisters to do something that they obviously did not want to do. Regardless, though, my mother almost always won the argument...or my father finished it when he got home from work.

As I think back even just on the past few days, about the number of times I myself have broken God's commands, I have to marvel at the fact, that never has God ever said to me, "I don't love you anymore."

To think about the fact that daily I break God's commands, and yet He still whispers in my ear,
"Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love..." (Jeremiah 31:3)

To think that He cannot lie, and therefore with a promise of everlasting love, I will forever be loved, and be one day held in the arms of my Savior for all eternity.

To understand the fact that nothing I can do can draw me away from the eternal love of God, now that I have been redeemed by the blood of the sacrificial lamb of Jesus Christ, stuns me into a state of amazement.

To realize that I personally could go and do the most horrific things that an individual could dream up. I could kill, steal, maim, and so much more, and still somehow be held in the confines of the love of God.

I know according to scripture I am not to do those things. Those are things that God desires I not do, but even if I did, I would still be forgiven and granted a seat at the marriage feast of the Lamb in heaven.

But maybe I need to understand that the reason I don't do things is more than just because I've been commanded not to. Maybe there is a deeper underlying reason why I don't just go out and do those things that I know I ought not.

Maybe it's because I understand that I am called not to just obey my Savior and His instructions, but that I should be totally devoted, and completely "sold out" to Him and Him only.

As a husband, I have a wife that I absolutely love and adore. There are plenty of other guys in the world today, that "love" their wives, but because they are not totally sold out and devoted to their wives, they can quickly find themselves in positions of compromise. Affairs and other relationships might arise if one is not devoted solely to their spouse.

We all know that affairs are something that can bring great pain, and can rip families apart. We all know that it is something that we should not be doing, but yet so many people, including Christians, find themselves entertaining the very thought because they are not devoted.

When it comes to Christ, we know not to kill, lie, steal and so forth because we are specifically told not to. Exodus 20. But beyond knowing that we are not supposed to, we find ourselves under the love and care of the very one who created us, and yet laid down His life for us.

When we understand the devotion that God has towards us, we find ourselves, not wanting to just follow a set of rules and laws, but rather please the one who gave Himself for us.

May we be devoted like He is towards us.