Obedience to God

OBEDIENCE TO GOD

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There are faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love. But greater than love is obedience, if the love does not include obedience.

The greatest commandment is to love God with all our heart and strength. But implicit in that love is obedience. Genuine love for God works out in strict obedience to God. Apart from obedience to the Father there is no love for God and there is no Kingdom of God.

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But Samuel replied: “Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the LORD? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams. For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, he has rejected you as king.” (I Samuel 15:22,23)

There are faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love. But greater than love is obedience, if the love does not include obedience.

I am pointing out the obvious here because typical Christian thinking maintains that Christians are not required to obey God strictly and sternly in view of the fact that we are “saved by grace.”

I have a passion to do the perfect will of God. I hope I never lose it. I count it a great gift, one to be highly desired and sought after.

While reviewing my notes I see that I have written quite a bit on the subject of obedience to God. However, I am going to add another essay, because the centrality of obedience to all that God has conceived has struck my mind and heart with renewed force.

When I was in Bible school I was told that the world was waiting for someone to go all the way with God. I suppose what was meant was someone who would do God’s perfect will.

Being unmarried, without brothers or sisters, I volunteered. I told the Lord that if He would give me the ability I would do whatever He desired—no matter what. Then I did not know what to expect, so great was my ignorance.

About that time we Bible students went to a missionary conference. I told the Lord I would go wherever He indicated. He responded with only three words: “I love you.”

So much for my burning missionary zeal.

Although I have made mistakes along the way, the promise to God has been maintained from that day to the present—some fifty-nine years.

I have discovered something since that time. I know now that nothing else is acceptable to God. He expects every person to do His perfect will from the heart. Instead of being some extraordinary consecration, doing God’s perfect will from the heart is the only acceptable attitude. One cannot have fellowship with God apart from this.

The King James version of the Bible suggests, in Romans 12:1,2, that there are three wills of God: an acceptable will, a good will, and a perfect will.

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. (Romans 12:1,2)

But note the New International version:

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Romans 12:1,2)

There is only one will of God, and it is good, pleasing, and perfect.

It is not at all true that there are three wills of God. There is only the one will of God for any creature at any given time, obviously. How could it be otherwise?

Either we are doing God’s will or we are not doing God’s will!

The problem in God’s creation is that of rebellion against His will. Apparently Satan was the first rebel, and from Satan has spread the virus of disobedience.

Adam and Eve disobeyed God. All other sins spring from the one sin of disobedience.

Satan has filtered into Christian consciousness the concept that no one can do God’s will, and so we must be saved by “grace.” By this is meant God recognizes we cannot do His will and so He pardons us if we will “accept Christ.”

This is a monumental error on two counts.

First, God’s perfect will for any person at any given time is always practical and possible. His commandments are not grievous. Whereas one can never please Satan, God is relatively easy to please in most instances.

Second, receiving Christ never is an alternative to doing God’s will. Rather, receiving Christ is the beginning of the program of redemption that leads us to the place where we always do God’s will from the heart. Would the new covenant be a better covenant if its end result was people who still were disobedient to God? What foolishness and ignorance pass for Divine truth in our day!

No temptation has taken us except that which is common to man. God always makes a way of escape so we may be able to bear it.

The idea that no person can do God’s perfect will is a lie—a lie calculated to keep God’s people from drawing close to Him.

My next statement is radical in the true sense of the word. If I am correct, we Christians need to rethink what we are teaching.

The fundamental concept of Christian teaching is false. The fundamental concept is that the purpose of salvation is to enable people when they die to avoid Hell and enter Paradise. This concept is not scriptural. It comes from a humanistic view of the Gospel. It is man-centered, not God-centered. It says nothing about solving God’s problem of rebellion against His will. It brings man to Paradise without solving God’s problem.

The purpose of salvation is not to bring rebels to Paradise, believers who never have been saved from worldliness, the lusts of the flesh, or their self-will.

The purpose of salvation is to bring Christ into the human personality until a new creation is formed. The new creation is an indissoluble blend of Christ and the individual.

The new creation always obeys God strictly, in every detail. Divine grace, properly understood and applied, does not bring rebellious people into Paradise. Divine grace converts the rebellious until they are obedient. While this may appear to be such a truism that it need not be considered carefully, current Christian teaching and procedures repeatedly proclaim forgiveness and largely ignore the critical need for actual conversion of character.

“Ah,” one may exclaim, “the prostitutes and thieves enter the Kingdom readily, going in advance of the religious.” True enough. The reason is, the prostitutes and thieves repent and change their ways until they are obeying God, whereas the religious trust in the beliefs and practices of their religion while their hearts remain far from God.

When God decided to answer the rebellion of Satan He conceived a great plan. He would take the Word, test Him to the limit, and when He was proven in obedience He would make Him a great Vine from which would grow branches who also would be proven in obedience.

Then the Vine and the branches would serve as judges of angels and of the peoples of the world.

So the Word was made flesh. He was tested in every conceivable manner. Finally He was presented with the decision to risk His eternal destiny, His fellowship with the Father, in order to bear the sins of the world on Himself.

This He did, in an agony of doubt and oppression.

The Son of God emerged in triumph, having obeyed His Father to the last breath. Because of His obedience, which He learned while on the earth, He has been given all authority in Heaven, upon the earth, and over all the inhabitants of the dark dungeons under the earth’s surface.

This is the beginning of God’s answer to the rebellion of Satan, although the offering of Isaac was a forerunner of the answer, making the obedient Abraham the father of all who believe.

The obedient Vine has been planted in God. Now there are to be obedient branches growing out from the Vine.

Jesus said if we did not bear fruit we would be removed from the Vine. Why is this? It is because the fruit is the moral image of Christ. The most important element of the fruit is strict obedience to God, the keeping of His commandments.

If we receive Christ and then are not obedient to God, we are not fulfilling God’s purpose in grafting us on the Vine. We then shall be removed from the Vine because we are not solving God’s problem.

Some are teaching that we can be cut out of the Vine but we will still be “saved,” meaning we will go to Heaven when we die. This is how entrenched the Christian myth is. It does not matter whether or not we remain in the Vine, in Christ, just as long as we go to our mansion in Heaven. It does not matter whether God is pleased or served, just as long as we escape Hell and go to Heaven.

It absolutely is true that we can be saved from wrath by believing in Christ and being baptized in water. But until we begin to obey God we are part of the problem of rebellion in God’s creation. No believer who has not learned to obey God in all matters will ride behind Christ in the Day of the Lord. No believer who has not learned to obey God is all matters will be a part of the new Jerusalem, the glorified Christian Church.

All the promises we associate with being a Christian will be fulfilled in the victorious saints, that is, in those who have learned to obey God in any and all situations.

Think about the following statement. Is it true?

Christian theology really is a device to get people into Paradise without ever having to learn to obey God. Thus it is destructive of the Divine program.

But Samuel replied: “Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the LORD? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams. For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, he has rejected you as king.” (I Samuel 15:22,23)

To obey the voice of the Lord is better than all religious practices—all religious practices! The Lord is more delighted with someone who obeys Him than with hundreds of people who are pursuing their religious activities.

We must start off as a Christian by studying the New Testament and asking the Holy Spirit to help us obey the numerous commandments therein. Some are not even doing this nowadays.

As we mature in the Lord we become conscious of His will for our life. As we present our body a living sacrifice we are able to prove the will of God. Eventually we find ourselves looking to the Lord for every decision we make.

However, a multitude of the members of the Christian religion have no such sense of the Lord’s will. And when they think God wants them to do something they are as likely to disobey as they are to obey. They trust they are saved by some mysterious force termed “grace” and so they proceed on their merry way.

They simply do not understand to not be obeying God is to not be a Christian at all, only a member of the “Christian religion.”

“Rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry.”

These words were spoken to King Saul who did not obey God in the matter of the Amalekites.

Saul attacked and defeated them, but then he added some modifications of his own. He was not like Moses who did precisely what the Lord commanded—in every detail.

Why is rebellion like the sin of divination? Because divination is a way of accomplishing one’s goals apart from the will of God.

Why is arrogance like the evil of idolatry?

Again, idolatry is the worship of a god and obedience to that god instead of to the Lord. In the case of arrogance, it is the worship of one’s self.

The “just shall live by faith” means the righteous individual lives by strict obedience to the Lord instead of by his or her own talents and desires.

What does it take to learn obedience to the Lord?

First, we must deny ourselves. We must decide once and for all that we are the Lord’s slave and will do whatever He wishes. Until we get down before God and tell Him we are His slave and will do whatever He wishes, we have not started on the Christian discipleship. Thus most Christian believers in the United States are not disciples. They are happy religious people, but they are not true Christian disciples.

But will they be “saved” and go to Heaven anyway? What a ridiculous question, don’t you agree? There is no love for God here, no true repentance, just membership in a religion.

We must take up our cross. Our cross is that painful, frustrating circumstance that we cannot get rid of without breaking God’s laws. There is a multitude of Christians in America who would never consent to go year after year in painful, frustrating circumstances. They say, “God wants me to be happy.” Then they proceed to forsake their husband or wife.

After we deny ourselves and are willing to carry our cross—to the end of our days if need be—we must follow the Master. The Lord Jesus wants us to talk to Him continually. Every aspect of our day and night is to be held before the Lord. This may sound difficult, but it quickly becomes as natural as breathing.

There is no true Christian life other than denying ourselves, taking up our cross, and following Jesus. All the rest is the contrived “Christian religion.”

We learn obedience to God by denying ourselves, taking up our cross, and following the Lord Jesus.

There are seven feasts of the Jews. The first three portray the basic salvation experience. The fourth is Pentecost and speaks of the place of the Holy Spirit in our life (Leviticus, Chapter Twenty-three).

The last three are at issue today.

The fifth feast, that of the Blowing of Trumpets, tells us that the Lord will come to His Church as the Lord, strong and mighty in battle. He will declare war against all of His enemies, beginning with the enemies that dwell in the personalities of His people.

The sixth feast, the Day of Atonement, is fulfilled as we are reconciled to God in actuality. We were reconciled to God legally when we accepted Christ as our Savior. Now we must be reconciled to God in our actual thinking, speaking, and acting.

All worldliness in our personality must be dealt with and removed.
All the lusts of our flesh and soul must be put to death through the Holy Spirit.
All self-will must be crucified until the Lord Jesus is permanently enthroned in the throne room of our personality.

Now we are ready for the spiritual fulfillment of the last feast, the feast of Tabernacles. The feast of Tabernacles is fulfilled when the Father and the Son come and make Their eternal abode with us.

Then we can sing, “God has become my salvation.”

In order for God to be enthroned in our personality and to be our song, our joy, our salvation, we must be absolutely obedient to His every desire.

Many of us have been “saved” and have gotten as far as the spiritual fulfillment of the feast of Pentecost. We term ourselves Pentecostal, or Charismatic.

Now we have a final step to take in the feast of Tabernacles.

The issue is that of total obedience to God. Are we willing to obey God perfectly, totally in every aspect of our personality and behavior?

If there is any point of resistance in us, we cannot possibly move past the Pentecostal experience into the fulfillment of the feast of Tabernacles.

This brings us to a fork in the road. Either we are going to remain at Pentecost, so to speak, or we are going to press forward into Tabernacles.

God perfects obedience in us by means of suffering. Therefore the issue of today is that of suffering.

Those who are willing to suffer under the hand of Christ will move forward into the indwelling of the Father and the Son.

Those who are not willing to serve Christ this intensely may take their gifts and ministries and go forth to “save a lost and dying world.” They may conceal their lack of inner reality with an abundance of evangelistic activity.

We are not to go forth to “save a lost and dying world” until the Lord Jesus specifically directs us to do so.

Many of us who are in the ministry are learning to wait, wait, wait until we know what we are doing. There are many programs in operation. There is this leadership seminar, that great meeting, the other plan to bring in thousands of people.

Bring them into what? Into our confusion? We ourselves do not know what the Lord wants. How are we going to inform these thousands of what the Lord wants?

But we can’t just sit and do nothing? Can’t we? We can continue with what is set before us without making new plans until we know what we are doing!

The Lord Jesus has a tremendous work planned for our day. But it is not the “same old, same old.” He is looking especially at the young people. He has new ways of doing things in mind; but we won’t know what they are if we keep planning bigger and better programs. The Lord will stand and look at us until we run out of steam.

We are close to the coming of the Kingdom of God to the earth. It is a time now for much pageantry, much interaction on the part of the congregations. The days of sitting and listening passively to a platform performance are over. The people need to be on their feet, dancing, rejoicing, fervently involved in the worship.

God is ready to make terrific demands on us so we will be strong enough to stand during the age of moral horrors that is approaching.

The lawless-grace-rapture-Heaven doctrine will never suffice for the needs of people today. If God were to “rapture” the Christian people in their present ignorance and immaturity they would perish in the Presence of Christ. They are worldly, filled with lusts and passions, and self-willed and disobedient. What would happen were they to be brought suddenly into the Presence of the Consuming Fire?

The Lord Jesus learned obedience to the Father in the sufferings and problems we encounter while living on the earth. So must every one who plans on working with Jesus in the installation of the Kingdom of God on the earth.

God has never before dealt with disobedience on the scale we are coming to in the present hour. God is going to shake the earth and the heavens. God shook the earth previously when He issued the awful Word from Mount Sinai. Now God is going to shake the earth and the heavens.

What this means is, God intends to determine the state of obedience in every creature, both on the earth and in the heavens. You and I can expect to be shaken until God has determined the obedient Christ has been eternally formed in us.

God is going to authorize Antichrist to reach into the heavens and shake the heavenly host of the saints and angels. That which can be shaken will be removed from the heavens.

It grew until it reached the host of the heavens, and it threw some of the starry host down to the earth and trampled on them. It set itself up to be as great as the Prince of the host; it took away the daily sacrifice from him, and the place of his sanctuary was brought low. Because of rebellion, the host of the saints and the daily sacrifice were given over to it. It prospered in everything it did, and truth was thrown to the ground. (Daniel 8:10-12)

We say, “Once we are in Heaven we can never be removed.” That is not what the above passage teaches.

We do not understand what takes place when we are saved.

When we truly receive Christ we are spiritually raised from the dead and we spiritually ascend to be with Christ at the right hand of God, waiting to appear with Him in the Day of the Lord.

The problem is to maintain that position, that crown that was given to us at the beginning.

Over the last few years we have seen notable ministers who without doubt had been at the right hand of Christ, and now have been torn down to wallow in the lusts of the flesh.

To those who would claim such cannot be, we declare that according to the newspaper it has taken place.

To say that a minister who is gorging himself or herself on the pornography on the Internet is maintaining his or her place at the right hand of Christ is absolute religious nonsense. It is this type of reasoning that has ruined the Christian churches.

The mighty are falling today in America. We are horribly backslidden. We have been burned and we do not realize it.

God wants all rebellion removed from His creation. He is ready to shake both the earth and the heavens. All that is not established in Christ, which in our day includes many of the church people I think, shall be removed from the Kingdom of God. We have not been taught stern obedience to the Father, therefore we are not sternly obedient to the Father. Therefore we shall be removed from the Kingdom of God.

According to the Book of Matthew, in the last days God will remove from His Kingdom all that offends and then those who offend. The angels will separate out all that is offensive to God.

The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. (Matthew 13:41)

But aren’t those who have died and gone to Heaven safe? Of course not. Peter says God is ready to judge the living and the dead.

But they will have to give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. (I Peter 4:5)

There is no safety in Heaven. We have constructed a mythology concerning Heaven that will not stand the test of Scripture. Heaven is part of the spirit realm. There is no Scripture that states we are changed by entering the spirit realm. What we are we are, after we die.

The only safety there is, is in the Lord Jesus Christ. The Name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous run into it and are safe. Do you see anything in the Bible about being saved by running into Heaven? It is the Lord Jesus who is our mighty fortress, not Heaven.

When God arises to shake terribly the earth and the heavens, the righteous scarcely will be saved. God has determined to remove all disobedience, root and branch, from His creation. This He is going to do without fail.

We are being warned today that disobedience will not be tolerated in the Kingdom of God. It is our part to get down before the Lord and tell Him in no uncertain terms that we are ready to obey Him no matter what He commands. We have put everything and everyone on the altar. He can take any relationship, any person, any thing, any job, any ambition, from us and we will not complain.

We will love God with all our heart and will have no idols that we worship.

“Brother Thompson, you are scaring me to death. I thought I was saved by grace, and Jesus did it all for me, and now you are telling me that God is going to require me to be obedient, to keep His commandments!”

That is exactly correct. But there is no need to fear, unless you are unwilling to obey God. If you are, like so many Christians in our country, arrogant, proud, certain God is obligated to save them no matter how they behave, in this case you have every reason to fear. When the Lords come He will avenge Himself on the hypocrites in the churches—and they are legion!

But if you will do as I have said, humble yourself and tell God you will serve Him to the best of your ability, then God will regard you as an obedient slave. You will be spared when He shakes the earth and the heavens.

As I think about the religions of the world, including Judaism and Christianity, it is easy to see why the Lord Jesus became so incensed against the Pharisees. Religion invariably substitutes s set of procedures that the adherent can practice in place of serving God from his or her heart.

It is as Jesus said: “You say if a person swears by the Temple it is nothing. But if he swears by the gold of the Temple, he is bound by his oath.” This sort of reasoning is so typical of religion!

The religionist scrupulously divides his herbs into tenths so he can maintain that he tithes faithfully. But then he ignores judgment, mercy, and faith.

The Christian sings “Have Thine own way, Lord,” and then teaches that no one can obey God and so we must be saved by grace.

I have received brochures lately that proclaim the merits of various religious leaders, but the name of Jesus is not mentioned. Why is this? It is because the great ones are generating schemes of their own and have no idea of what the Lord has in mind. The Christian circles of today are filled with such abominations, such blind leaders who seek to guide the blind.

You know what! Each one of us needs to sit down and ask Christ what it is He wants. We need to come out of the religious uproar and listen until we hear the voice of Christ.

Believe me, this can be difficult.

A minister called me recently. He said, “We (referring to himself and his congregation) are used to doing things. Now we are waiting for the Lord and nothing is taking place. What shall I do?”

I responded, “Whatever you do, do not walk in the light of your own sparks. If you do, the Lord promises you will lie down in sorrow.”

Who among you fears the LORD and obeys the word of his servant? Let him who walks in the dark, who has no light, trust in the name of the LORD and rely on his God. But now, all you who light fires and provide yourselves with flaming torches, go, walk in the light of your fires and of the torches you have set ablaze. This is what you shall receive from my hand: You will lie down in torment. (Isaiah 50:10,11)

I said, “In our assembly we have waited twenty-five years for the Lord to move. We have had three services a week, special meetings, retreats, and so forth. But nothing major. No effort has been made to add to our numbers, although we have grown slowly but surely.

“We have been criticized by those who would have us go forth and ‘save souls from Hell.’ But we have looked to the Lord; looked to the Lord; looked to the Lord.

“About four months ago a brother prophesied that we had ‘people who have been trained up in this place and now they are to go to the nations.’

“I thought, ‘Right. I’ve heard this before.’

“Lo and behold. Within a matter of months we were sending people to Mexico, Ireland, and the Philippines. I can’t tell you exactly how it happened except that the doors just opened and we all knew it was the Lord.”

I told the inquiring minister this, and he said. “Then I will just keep waiting.”

We have been accused of passivity. I have studied somewhat on the subject of passivity, and this is not what we are practicing. We are alert in prayer. We are decisive. We are not looking for fleeces. We are not wandering from one thing to another as “the spirit moves.”

Our people are growing in righteousness, holiness, and obedience to God. We are looking to the Lord, expecting Him to use us as He will.

And now it is happening. The teams have brought back a very good report. They have been received well. One pastor of another country said: “When we have teams from America we have to clean up after them. But we want you back!”

So the integrity pays off. If anyone had become sick or was killed, we have the assurance that we did what we did in the Lord’s will. We are not trying to save the world. We are endeavoring to share what we have been given through the years, but only as Christ directs.

What would the history of the Christian churches have been like if all the believers, including the leaders, had waited on the Lord instead of assuming that now Christ has given the Great Commission we are to act on it?

This itself is a joke. Those who are urging us to obey the Great Commission (which was given specifically by the Lord to eleven men) do not know what it is. They imagine it is to go out and get “souls saved” and to build churches. They ought to read it again. It is to make disciples and tell them to keep God’s commandments; not tell them they are saved by grace so they do not need to keep God’s commandments.

What would the history of the Catholic Church have been like if everyone, from the Pope down, had waited until they heard from God? Obviously there would have been no burning of heretics, for Christ would never authorize the burning of heretics.

What would the history of the Protestant churches have been like? Would there be the cynicism there is in America today about “those hypocrites and money-grabbers who call themselves Christians”? Would a pastor be driving by another church to see if someone had “stolen his sheep”? Would the denominations be exalting themselves instead of the Name of the Lord?

I don’t think so. I think all of this has come about because we do not know what it means to obey God. We are building towers of Babel instead of lifting up the Name of Jesus.

My prayer is that every believer in Christ will become filled to overflowing with a passionate, fanatical desire to do the will of Christ from a perfect heart.

Anyone can do the will of Christ perfectly if this is what he or she desires above all else. Christ always will make a way for us to obey no matter how seemingly impossible the challenge may appear.

Faith, hope, and love. The greatest of these is love. But we do not love Christ when we do not keep His commandments.

Faith always displays itself in obedience to God. There is no true faith in God apart from obedience to His every command.

Hope always displays itself in obedience to God. If our hope is in God, that He will give us the desires of our heart, we are not then going to disobey Him.

Love always displays itself in obedience to God. How could we truly love God and then disobey Him? This is impossible!

The greatest of all commandments is to love God with all our heart and strength. But it is impossible to love God and not keep His commandments, because of the nature of love. To love and worship God is to cleave to Him with a loving, obedient heart.

To disobey God, our Father, in any matter, is absolutely unthinkable. This would be a certain indication that we do not trust God and are not pleased with Him or His ways.

There are penalties for disobeying God, even though we think we are “saved by grace.”

However, there is more to it than this. God has enough power to force every creature to obey Him. But God wants us to obey Him because we love Him.

It is vain and foolish to talk about loving God and then say no one can possibly keep His commandments.

Someone said to me: “Christ told us to be perfect as our Father in Heaven is perfect. We know we can’t do this and so we don’t have to keep any of His commandments. He has given us “grace” as an alternative to keeping His commandments.

How ridiculous! Of course we can be perfect, not instantly perfected, but perfect for the day.

The Lord Jesus told the rich young man that if he would sell his possessions and give the proceeds to the poor he would be perfect. That is what Jesus said.

When the Lord tells us to be perfect He is not trying to frustrate us. Neither is He playing games with us, saying He knows we can’t be perfect so we have to call on His mercy. What kind of a Father is this?

He means we can do what God is requiring right at that time. If we do the simple thing God is requiring at the moment, we are perfect in God’s sight—not perfected, but perfect for the moment.

There can be a perfect child who is not as yet a perfect adult!

All God asks of anyone is to be perfect for the hour. This we can do, with His help. The next hour presents new challenges and new grace, new strength and wisdom.

God demands obedience from every creature, human, angelic, and whatever others there may be. He is, as I stated, ready to shake the earth and the heavens.

If you wish to remain in the Kingdom of God, start asking God to help you be totally obedient to His every will. You will find this to be the most joyous of all ways to live.

To not do this, to continue in the lawless-grace-rapture-Heaven delusion, is to ensure an agonizing future.

Search the New Testament. See if what we are stating is correct. It is up to you, not your priest, pastor, or teacher, to make sure that you are rooted in Jesus Christ, in His love and will.

Don’t take chances with your eternal destiny and the eternal destinies of those who are looking to you for direction.

“Father, I pray you will give us such a burning passion to do Your perfect will that everything else will become secondary in importance.

“Your Kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.

“Amen.”

(“Obedience to God”, 4058-1)