Key 17 - Obedience

• The ultimate sacrifice is the sacrifice of a person’s pride.

• God isn’t into micromanaging.

• His expectations and commands are typically more broad.  “Don’t lie, steal, cheat, kill - or in general, don’t be mean to one another.  Be nice!”  Those are God’s commands and expectations for us.

• So not every decision in your life is a “Is it the right decision versus wrong decision” kind of choice.  Most of the decisions you make every day God lets you have your own say in them.  He’s not telling you “Do this” or “Do that” and if you don’t, He’s mad at you.  Once again, it’s more like an adult parent giving advice and attempting to help you make wise choices.

• Now, let me be clear.  When He advises you of something, if you do what He advises, you’ll be better off.  However, that’s not the point.  The point is that He is not going to condemn you or get all angry with you if you decide to do things your own way when He is just giving advice.  It might frustrate Him if it’s a really important decision, and He might not protect you from the consequences of your choice, but we have to get away from the whole “that’s a sin and that’s a sin and that’s a sin” mentality that we Christians tend to have.

• Why?  The Devil likes to get us to focus on sin and to feel like every mistake we make is a sin.  Sin shackles us and causes us to feel bad about ourselves.  That mentality paralyzes.  We get to a place where we don’t want to sin so we are afraid to make decisions.  No no no.  God sent Jesus to die for our sins so that through Him sin is defeated.  “There is therefore NO condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”  What that means is that God doesn’t want us to focus so much on sins.  He wants us to focus on what we SHOULD be doing instead of beating ourselves up over what we shouldn’t be doing.  Turn FROM sin and turn TOWARDS doing what is right.  That means you aren’t focusing on sins anymore.  You’re focusing on doing good.

• If you want power with God, you want to influence Him so that He gives you more authority and power in your life, answered prayers and even supernatural miracles, clean up your act FIRST.  Before anything else, put away those things that you know God doesn’t approve of.  Make some of those things your sacrifices to Him.

• 1 Samuel 15:22 states, “Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the Lord?  To obey is…”  What?  “... better than sacrifice.”

• If you sacrifice to God, but you are not obeying Him, your sacrifice is for nothing and may even be an abomination, as it was with Saul.  First obey.  Then sacrifice.