“Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear. For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.” [Philippians 2:12-13 NLT]
I woke up in the middle of the night singing the old song, “Trust and Obey.” The song begins, “When we walk with the Lord In the light of His Word What a glory He sheds on our way. While we do His good will He abides with us still And with all who will trust and obey.” And the Chorus declares, “Trust and obey, For there’s no other way, To be happy in Jesus, But to trust and obey.”
I have been thinking about obedience a lot lately. The word obedience seems to have disappeared from our everyday conversation (unless we are talking about canine training). I hear a lot of messages about trust and faith in God. I hear fewer about obedience. Yet you cannot have one without the other.
Nik Ripkin in his book, “The Insanity of Obedience,” recounts a story told to him by a man who was awakened by the Holy Spirit and told to gather a load of food and take it by horse and sled to a pastor’s family who had been left to die in a one-room hut in the frozen tundra. The man argued with the Holy Spirit that there was no way he would survive the trip and get back home.
The Spirit replied, “You do not have to come back; you simply have to go.”
Obedience.
