E. M. Bounds
Chapter 9
An obedience discovered itself in John Fletcher, which I wish I could describe or imitate. It produced in him a mind ready to embrace every cross with alacrity and pleasure. He had a singular love for the lambs of the flock and applied himself with the greatest diligence to their instruction for which he had a peculiar gift … All his fellowship with me was so mingled with prayer and praise that every employment and every meal was, as it were, perfumed therewith. – John Wesley
Under the Mosaic law, to obey was looked upon as being “better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams” (1 Sam 15:22). In Deuteronomy 5:29, Moses represented Almighty God declaring the importance He laid upon the exercise of this quality. Referring to the waywardness of His people, He cried,
O that there were such a heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their children for ever!
Unquestionably, obedience is a high virtue, the quality of a soldier. To obey belongs, preeminently, to the soldier. It is his first and last lesson. He must learn how to practice it at all times without questioning or complaining. Obedience is faith in action. It is the outflow, the very test of love. “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me” (John 14:21).
Furthermore, obedience is love. “If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love” (John 15:10). What a marvelous statement of the relationship created and maintained by obedience! The Son of God is held in the bosom of the Father’s love by virtue of His obedience! The fact that allows the Son of God to ever abide in His Father’s love is revealed in His own statement: “For I do always those things that please him” (John 8:29).
The gift of the Holy Spirit in full measure and in richer experience depends on loving obedience. “If ye love me, keep my commandments” is the Master’s word. “And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever” (John 14:15-16).
Obedience to God is a condition of spiritual thrift, inward satisfaction, and stability of heart. Obedience opens the gates of the Holy City and gives access to the Tree of Life. “Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city” (Rev 22:14).
What is obedience? It is doing God’s will. It is keeping His commandments. How many of the commandments require obedience? To keep half of them and break the other half — is that real obedience? To keep all the commandments but one — is that obedience? The apostle James was very explicit on this point. “Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all” (James 2:10).
The spirit that prompts a man to break one commandment is the spirit that may move him to break them all. God’s commandments are a unit. To break one strikes at the principle that underlies and runs through the whole. He who does not hesitate to break a single commandment probably would, under the same stress and surrounded by the same circumstances, break them all.
Universal obedience of the race is demanded. Nothing short of absolute obedience will satisfy God. The keeping of all His commandments is the demonstration of obedience that God requires. But can we keep all of God’s commandments? Can a man receive moral ability that helps him to obey every one of them? Certainly he can. By the same toke, man can, through prayer, obtain ability to do this very thing.
Does God give commandments that men cannot obey? Is He so arbitrary, so severe, so unloving, that He issues commandments that cannot be obeyed? The answer is that, in all of Scripture, not a single instance is recorded of God having commanded any man to do a thing that was beyond his power. Is God so unjust and so inconsiderate to require of man something that he is unable to do? Certainly not. To infer it is to slander the character of God.
Let us think about this thought for a moment. Do earthly parents require their children to perform duties that they cannot do? Where is the father who would even think of being so unjust and so tyrannical? Is God less kind and just than faulty earthly parents? Are they better or more just than a perfect God? What a foolish and inconsistent thought!
In principle, obedience to God is the same quality as obedience to earthly parents. It implies, in general, the giving up of one’s own way to follow that of another. It requires the surrender of the will to the will of another. It implies the submission of oneself to the authority and requirements of a parent. Commands, either from our heavenly Father or our earthly father, are directed by love. All such commands are in the best interests of those who are commanded. God’s commands are not issued in severity or tyranny. They are always issued in love and in our interests. So, it is important for us to pay attention and obey them. In other words, God has issued His commands to us in order to promote our good.
It pays, therefore, to be obedient. Obedience brings its own reward. God has ordained it so. Since He has, even human reason can realize that He would never demand what is out of our power to perform.
Obedience is love fulfilling every command. It is love expressing itself. Obedience, therefore, is not a hard demand made on us. It is not any more than the service a husband renders to his wife or a wife renders to her husband. Love delights to obey and please whom it loves. There are no hardships in love. There may be demands, but there are no irritations. There are no impossible tasks for love.
How simply and matter-of-factly John said, “And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight” (1 John 3:22). This is obedience, running ahead of every command. It is love, obeying by anticipation. Those who say that men are bound to commit sin because of environment, heredity, or tendency greatly err, and even sin. God’s commands are not grievous (1 John 5:3). Their ways are pleasant, and their paths are peaceful. The task that falls to obedience is not a hard one, “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt 11:30).
Far be it from our heavenly Father to demand impossibilities of His children. It is possible to please Him in all things, for He is not hard to please. He is neither a hard matter nor an austere lord, “taking up that [he] laid not down, and reaping that [he] did not sow” (Luke 19:22). Thank God it is possible for every child of God to please his heavenly Father! It is really much easier to please Him than to please men. Moreover, we may know when we praise Him. This is the witness of the Spirit — the inward, divine assurance given to all the children of God that they are doing their Father’s will and that their ways are well pleasing in His sight.
God’s commandments are righteous and founded in justice and wisdom. “Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good” (Rom 7:12). “Just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints” (Rev 15:3). God’s commandments, then, can be obeyed by all who seek supplies of grace that enable them to obey. These commandments, then, can be obeyed. God’s government is at stake. God’s children are under obligation to obey Him. Disobedience cannot be permitted. The spirit of rebellion is the very essence of sin. It is denial of God’s authority that God cannot tolerate. He has never done so. A declaration of His attitude was part of the reason why the Son of the Highest was made manifest among men.
For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. (Rom 8:3-4)
If anyone complains that man under the Fall is too weak and helpless to obey these high commands of God, the answer is that, through the atonement of Christ, man is able to obey. The Atonement is God’s enabling act. God places in us, through regeneration and the agency of the Holy Spirit, the enabling grace sufficient for all that is required of us under the Atonement. This grace is furnished without measure in answer to prayer.
So, while God commands, He, at the same time, stands pledged to give us all the necessary strength of will and grace of soul to meet His demands. Because this is true, man has no excuse for disobedience. He is immediately criticized for refusing or failing to secure necessary grace, whereby he may serve the Lord with reverence and godly fear.
Those who say it is impossible to keep God’s commandments overlook one important consideration. It is the vital truth that, through prayer and faith, man’s nature is changed and made partaker of the divine nature. All reluctance to obey God is taken out of him. His natural inability to keep God’s commandments, growing out of his fallen and helpless state, is gloriously removed. By this radical change in his moral nature, a man receives power to obey God in every way and to yield full and glad allegiance. Then he can say, “I delight to do thy will, O my God” (Ps 40:8). Not only is rebellion of the natural man removed, but he also receives a heart that gladly obeys God’s word.
There is no denying that the unrenewed man cannot obey God. But to declare that — after one is renewed by the Holy Spirit, has received a new nature, and become a child of the King — he cannot obey God is to assume a ridiculous attitude. It is to show a lamentable ignorance of the work and implications of the Atonement.
Absolute and perfect obedience is the state to which the man of prayer is called. “Lifting up holy hands, without doubting” (1 Tim 2:8) is the condition of obedient praying. Here, inward loyalty and love, together with outward cleanliness, are set forth as accompaniments of acceptable praying.
John gave the reason for answered prayer in the passage previously quoted: “And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight” (1 John 3:22). Because we have said that keeping God’s commandments is the reason why He answers prayer, it is reasonable to assume that we can keep God’s commandments. We can do those things that are pleasing to Him. Do you think God would make the keeping of His commandments a condition of effective prayer if He knew we could not keep His statutes? Certainly not!
Obedience can ask with boldness at the throne of grace. Those who exercise it are the only ones who can ask after that fashion. The disobedient folk are timid in their approach and hesitant in their supplication. They are stopped by their wrongdoing. The requesting, obedient child comes into the presence of his Father with confidence and boldness. His very consciousness of obedience gives him courage and frees him from the dread born of disobedience.
To do God’s will without hesitation is the joy and the privilege of the successful praying man. He who has clean hands and a pure heart can pray with confidence. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven” (Matt 7:21). To this great deliverance may be added another: “If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love: even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love” (John 15:10).
“The Christian’s trade,” said Martin Luther, “is prayer.” But the Christian has another trade to learn before he proceeds to learn the secrets of the trade of prayer. He must learn well the trade of perfect obedience to the Father’s will. Obedience follows love, and prayer follows obedience. The business of real obedience to God’s commandments inseparably accompanies the business of real praying.
One who has been disobedient may pray. He may pray for pardoning mercy and the peace of his soul. He may come to God’s feet with tears, confession, and a penitent heart. God will hear him and answer his prayer. This kind of praying does not belong to the child of God, but to the penitent sinner, who has no other way to approach God. It is the possession of the unjustified soul, not of him who has been saved and reconciled to God.
An obedient life helps prayer. It speeds prayer to the throne. God cannot help hearing the prayer of an obedient child. He has always heard His obedient children when they have prayed. Unquestioning obedience counts much in the sight of God, at the throne of heavenly grace. It acts like the flowing tides of many rivers. It gives volume and fullness of flow, as well as power, to the prayer closet. An obedient life is not simply a ransomed life. It is not the old life primed and repainted. It is not a superficial church-going life or a flurry of activities. Neither is it an external conformation to the dictates of public morality. Far more than all this is combined in a truly obedient Christian God-fearing life.
A life of full obedience, a life that is settled on the most intimate terms with God, offers no hindrance to the prayer closet. Where the will is in full conformity to God’s will and the outward life shows the fruit of righteousness like Aaron and Hur, such a life lifts up and sustains the hands of prayer.
If you have an earnest desire to pray well, you must learn how to obey well. If you have a desire to learn to pray, then you must have an earnest desire to learn how to do God’s will. If you desire to pray to God, you must first have a consuming desire to obey Him. If you want to have free access to God in prayer, then every obstacle in the nature of sin or disobedience must be removed.
God delights in the prayers of obedient children. Requests coming from the lips of those who delight to do His will reach His ears with great speed. They incline Him to answer them promptly and abundantly. In themselves, tears are not rewarding. Yet, they have their uses in prayer. Tears should baptize our place of supplication.
The person who has never wept concerning his sins has never really prayed over his sins. Sometimes tears are a prodigal’s only plea. But tears are for the past, for the sin and wrongdoing. There is another step and stage waiting to be taken. That step is unquestioning obedience. Until it is taken, prayer for blessing and continued sustenance will be of no avail.
Everywhere in Scripture, God is represented as disapproving disobedience and condemning sin. This is as true in the lives of His elect as it is in the lives of sinners. Nowhere does He approve of sin or excuse disobedience. God puts the emphasis always upon obedience to His commands. Obedience to them brings blessing. Disobedience meets with disaster. This is true in the Word of God from the beginning to the end. It is because of this that the men of prayer in the Bible had such influence with God. Obedient men have always been the closest to God. They are the ones who have prayed well and have received great things from God. They have brought great things to pass.
Obedience to God counts tremendously in the realm of prayer. This fact cannot be emphasized too much or too often. To plead for a faith that tolerates sinning is to cut the ground out from under the feet of effective praying. To excuse sinning by the plea that obedience to God is not possible to unregenerate men is to discount the character of the new birth and to place men where effective praying is not possible. At one time Jesus spoke out with a very pertinent and personal question that strikes right to the core of disobedience. He asked, “Why call to me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?” (Luke 6:46).
He who prays must obey. The person who wants to get anything out of his prayers must be in perfect harmony with God. Prayer puts a spirit of obedience in those who sincerely pray. The spirit of disobedience is not of God and does not belong to God’s praying people.
An obedient life is a great help to prayer. In fact, an obedient life is a necessity to prayer. The absence of an obedient life makes prayer an empty performance. A penitent sinner seeks pardon and salvation and has an answer to his prayers, even with a life stained with sin. However, God’s royal intercessors come before Him with royal lives. Holy living promotes holy praying. God’s intercessors, “lifting up holy hands” (1 Tim 2:8), are the symbols of righteous, obedient lives.
warriorprincess4yeshua.blog 