Limited Obedience Is Just Disobedience

I was listening to a radio program about being obedient to God, while driving home. And towards the end of the program I heard an interesting statement: “Limited obedience is just disobedience”.

What a true statement that is. If we simply pick and choose what commandments we will follow, what areas of our lives we will let God into, and how often we will act like a Christian should, we are not really being obedient to God. Going part way isn’t good enough.

We know that all scripture is profitable (2 Timothy 3:16-17) and therefore must all be followed. No portion can be left out. We need to have God’s commands penetrate into the whole of our lives.

Stopping in the middle, between disobedient and fully obedient still classes us as disobedient. This is like heating cold water. If the water is not heated enough it remains lukewarm and if we are lukewarm we will be vomited out of the Lord’s mouth (Revelation 3:15-16).

While we live our day-to-day lives we must continually make sure that we are being fully obedient and not being selective with sin. We need to make sure that we are prioritizing God always, looking ahead to heaven (Matthew 6:33).

I am sure that none of us want to be disobedient to God. But it can be easy for us to not quite go all the way with God. We need to have a Christ-like mind, which we won’t have if we are not filling our heads and hearts with Scripture. Perhaps we aren’t reading our Bibles enough. Or maybe we read the Word often, but need to perform studies of the Scriptures more often to provoke greater thought on biblical teachings.

Heaven is a place we each want to go to and we all want to be with the Father and our Saviour, the Holy Spirit and the many other Christians. To ensure that we stay on the path to this goal we must remain obedient. Let us make sure that we are being truly obedient by being fully obedient, not limiting how much of God’s word that we follow.

                -- John Thrower Jr.