Obedience Is Love

The important thing to remember about obedience is that it is impossible to separate it from love. Based on God's truth, obedience is adhering to a command, but it is much more than simply following one of God's directives. Obedience is love. "If you love Me, keep my commandments." We don't obey God out of coercion or duty but because we love Him who first loved us. And certainly when He loved us, our mind set was not obedience to Him. No matter how young we were when we came to Him as our Savior, our minds and hearts were directed toward selfishness--our needs, our way, now. But recognizing His love for us and becoming His child changes that. His Spirit immediately begins to transform us into His image. And He does that by encouraging obedience with a deep sense of joy and discouraging disobedience with a deep sense of discontent. There is no one more miserable than the Christian living a life of disobedience. And the key to obedience is love. And perhaps the severest test of love is being called to do something when we have no desire to do it. Then, the love of self must be deliberately set aside by our love for Him. I choose to love Him more than I love me and my wants, my comfort--perhaps even more than what I perceive to be my needs. As Jesus prayed we must pray, "nevertheless, Thy will be done."
And the remarkable thing about loving obedience is that it grows. When I in love choose to obey God's truth, my love for Him grows. And what is the result of that? Since I have learned to love Him more deeply, I now find it easier to obey Him--because love is the foundation for obedience. Just as every act of disobedience makes it easier to disobey the next time, so every act of obedience--every act of love for God--makes it easier to obey Him the next time. So, how important does that make every choice I make? Every choice to obey or disobey affects my love for Him. And the depth of my love for Him affects my desire to please Him through obedience. Every act is vitally important to my spiritual well-being.
And don't forget that God's commandments are themselves founded on love--His eternal, infinite, omniscient love. He who knows the world in which we live better than anyone and knows the creatures He has created better than anyone, has given us guidelines to enable us to live in this world with an unshakeable sense of joy and purpose. And with an unshakeable sense that we are loved every moment of every day by the Greatest Lover who has ever existed. And He loves us enough to let us choose. He will not coerce. But the choice is not obedience or disobedience. It is love or hate. "If you love Me, keep my commandments."