Obedience

Obedience

(Learning How to love the Lord)

David Wilkerson

My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue;

but in deed and in truth.

(1John 3:18)

God says, “Don’t love me with just your words. Don’t just love me with your tongue. Show me your love by your deeds and your actions.”

You turn to Song of Solomon. You’ll find very emotional sentimental words that we understand, loving words that the human minds understands, a kind of words we express between husband and wife and those who’re deeply in love.

But it goes beyond sentiment. It goes beyond feeling. It goes beyond our emotion.

He filters every song. He judges every prayer that comes as incense before His throne.

He judges it. He filters it. He examines it.

Sad to say, the majority of what ascends into the heaven, supposedly incense, is rejected.

Jesus said, in no uncertain terms to love Him is to hear and obey His commandments.

In other words, It’s impossible to love Jesus only with your words and your tongue.

Impossible.

It is something you do. It is something I do.

Here, it really nails down.

For this is the love of God

that we keep His commandments:

and His commandments are not grievous

1John 5:3

Nothing could be more clear in the word of God. Love for the Lord goes beyond sentimentality. It goes beyond emotion, beyond our feelings, beyond our words, beyond our feeling, beyond our singing.

Love for the Lord as it’s prescribed here by Jesus Himself is obedience to His every word.

If you keep my commandments

you shall abide or live in my love

John 15:10

“You want to really not just come to me with sessions of love not just expressions of love. Do you want to live in love with me?”

It’s a lifestyle. It’s a 24-hour lifestyle.

If you keep my commandments

you shall abide or live in my love;

even as I have kept my Father’s commandments

and I abide in His love

John 15:10

“Loving me has everything to do with obeying me in your hunger and in your desire to know my commandments, to hear my word to obey my word fully. That is to love me.

If you seek me, and by the help of the Holy Ghost understand my word and if you’re praying for the Holy Ghost to give you ability and power and enablement to keep my word, then you’re loving me.”

David understood that all of his singing, all of his words, all of his written or verbalized had come out of obedient heart.

He said,

If I regard iniquity of my heart,

the Lord will not hear me

Psalms 66:18

In spite of all my songs, my love songs, all my expression of love,

if I regard …

the word regard there means …

if I’ve made peace with my sin,

if I’ve decided to live with it and live in disobedience,

God will not hear me.

“I will not give this up.

I will live with my sin.

I will make peace with it.”

(There’s no more conviction.)

I want nothing to do with being convicted.”

That’s absolutely shut you off from the love of Jesus Christ.

You can not possibly love Him.

His love for you is undying. His mercy is everlasting, but there’s no possibility.

He can’t receive love from that kind of our heart.

He that turns away his ear from hearing the law,

even his prayer shall be abomination

Proverbs 28:9

He didn’t make us commandment to obey His word without in the new testament giving us all the power of the Holy Ghost we need to do what He told us to do.

David said,

Thy word I have hid in mine heart,

that I might not sin against Thee

Psalms 119:11

That word hid Hebrews to hoard

“I have hoarded it up the word of God

so that when I face sin, when I face temptation, I have the word hit in my heart.”

That’s why we beg you,

we beseech you,

we plea with you,

to read and to study and get into this,

and pray Holy Ghost make it real.

Hoard it up.

Build it up.

Hide it in your heart that I might not sin against you, O Lord.

Listen to his heart.

Lord, make me to go in the path of Your commandments; for therein do I delight

(Psalms 119:35)

take not the word of truth

wholly out of my mouth

Because I do love that commandments

(Psalms 119:43)

O God, make me to go in the right path of Your commandments.

I love Your word. I love to be reproved by it.

I believe that the test of real holiness is that a man loves to be reproved by the word of God. He’s not afraid of it. He wants and desires godly reproof.

First of all, check your obedience.

“Lord, there’s an area in my life.”

and go back, let the Holy Ghost examine it and say

“Lord, give me power to obey.

If I have to go make something right,

I want to make it right.

I want to walk in obedience.

I want to believe this word.”

Folks, get into this book

There can be a sin problem, lust, disobedience to the word of God. That has to be dealt with.

If we bypass the root problem,

I’m going to stand before God and answer.

I’m telling you now with all the love in my heart.

If you want to love Jesus “I want to serve Him and love Him with all of my heart,”

then you are going to stand right before His presence.

Right now say, “Lord I know now. I can’t love You, unless I obey You. I have to obey Your word.”

Will you right now open up your heart and say,

“Jesus, in this next week send the Holy Ghost into my life.”

Because if you are saved you have Holy Ghost there to comfort, strengthen and convict. When He comes, (He says) He’ll convict your sin. He’ll warn you of the judgement on sin. He’ll lead you in another path of the righteousness. But, He’ll convict your sin. And then when you deal with that. then He’ll opens up the door that favors blessing of God.