God's Time Is Every Moment In Our Lives

"My people will be destroyed because they have no knowledge. You have refused to learn, so I will refuse to let you be priest to me. You have forgotten the teachings of your God, so I will forget your children. The more priests there are, the more they sin against me. I will take away their honor and give them shame. Since the priests live off the sin offerings of the people, they want the people to sin more and more. The priests are as wrong as the people, and I will punish them both for what they have done... " Hosea 4:6-9

READ: HOSEA 4:1-5:15

SITUATION: Israel disobeyed. The national leaders had failed to teach God's law to the people. Many of God's chosen people sold their bodies in prostitution, which in turn led to national destruction.

OBSERVATION: People who have genuine faith and love for God will try to obey God.

INSPIRATION: To be a Christian is, in a sense, to be a man without a country. If you truly are obedient to Christ--if you take the Scriptures to heart and attempt to live them--you will inevitably come into conflict with the world. You belong to no one but Christ, while those in the world give themselves to people, possessions, institutions, and idols other than to Christ. To be a Christian is to stand apart and yet to remain within --to dare to be different. You look at everything through the prism of Scripture, and things look different when viewed biblically.

Success in the world means power, influence, money prestige. But in the Christian world, it means pleasing God. This quest for obedience may lead you to do things that are wholly contrary to what the world wants and rewards.

Obeying his commandments means reading and understanding Scripture, then determining that you are going to live exactly as Scripture teaches. I don't believe anybody can do that, because it is almost impossible not to be caught up every day in the ways of the world. But you can make an effort to live biblically. That is how to process of sanctification works--learning how to obey God, how to listen for his commands in your life. It is reading the Scripture and allowing it to soak into you. It is understanding the requirements of God's commandments and then gradually, day by day, in large ways and small, allowing that understanding to control the actions of your life...

If I had to pick the one thing...that has caused the most failure in obeying God, it would be that we figure God's time is our Bible study, our prayer time, the meeting with our prayer group, and Sunday morning church service. That's just not true. God's time is every moment in our lives...We don't put him on and take him off like a suit of clothes...If we would "wear" him all day long, we would discover obedience becoming a reflex reaction. (From "The Quest for Obedience" by Charles Colson in Practical Christianity.)

APPLICATION Does obedience to God come easier--or harder--at certain times of the week? In certain places? Among certain people? In order to obey God faithfully you may need to make changes in your heart and in your life. Make a change and declare a new start today.

EXPLORATION: Obedience--Genesis 2:16-17; Exodus 8:25-29; Joshua 1:6-8; 1 Samuel 15:22; Matthew 23_24-24, Luke 17:7-10

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The Devotional Bible - Experiencing the Heart of Jesus, Max Lucado General Editor, New Century Version, Thomas Nelson Bibles