Hey everybody,

Thanks for hanging in there with me while I've been away. I had some ground to cover with some coursework. One word - discipline. That's what it has taken for me to get the assignment in. Now that I have, I can relax just a tiny bit. I am also working on a talk that I will be giving soon. I've been given the topic by the conference organizers and I'm working with it. I just need God to do what He does when I speak and then it will be okay. I'm trusting Him to do it. 

Part of what I am preparing for the conference deals with obedience. I know that just reading that word makes some of your flesh scream out to just go to another blog. And, if that's you, it's okay. My flesh has pulled that on me before too. One thing the flesh hates is obedience. It wants to do things in its own way, sans rules and order. And if we factor in obedience to God, then the flesh really wants to have a thrown-down pity party.

That's to be expected. But obedience to God is required if we are going to be His kids. I know and can plainly see that parenting rules are much different than they used to be. So many parents want to be friends with their kids and have abandoned even what the Bible says about discipline. But know this, even if you decide to parent in lax ways, God has not taken the same route. So many times throughout the Bible, we see the fruit of disobedience when the "children" went against Father God. There is always a cost to it. And there will always be a bill to pay for it.

So, let's just get it set in our minds now that we are going to be obedient to God. It takes the shape of doing His will in His way and in His time. It takes the "but I want" and turns it around into "what does God want me to do."  It becomes more intimate and personal when we look at it from the perspective of "how can my actions appease God?" It becomes closer to our hearts when we will ask ourselves "how can I obey the Sovereign Lord of the Universe?" And it's more personal when we say "God sees me. God knows me. And how then might I serve Him through my obedience today?" You see, when we want to obey, we will obey. But if we want to see things as what we can't do instead of what we can do, we remain locked up in our own self-will.

It's time to step out of that. Step out of the self and into a relationship with God where obedience is the banner. You're never going to thrive the way you could if you do not do what you should. Obey God.