At Your Wit's End (Part 18)

It is not enough to just read and study God's Word, you must also obey it if you are to be established in God. Samuel told King Saul:

1 Samuel 13:13 "You have done foolishly. You have not kept the commandment of the Lord your God, which He commanded you. For now the Lord would have established your kingdom over Israel forever." 

When you take God's Word literally for what it says and let it reign over your circumstances, then its supernatural power is released to work in your life:

1 Thessalonians 2:13 "For this reason we also thank God without ceasing, because when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which also effectively works in you who believe."

Obedience brings blessing, but disobedience allows curses to operate in your life according to Deuteronomy 11:27-28. God declares in Jeremiah:

 7:23-"Obey my voice, and I will be your God."
11:4-"Obey my voice ...and you will be my people." 26:13-"Obey and your soul will live." 

Those who observe and obey the Word are blessed:

Deuteronomy 12:28 "Observe and obey all these words which 1 command you, that it may go well with you and your children after you forever, when you do what is good and right in the sight of the Lord your God."

Many refuse to obey God's Word, close their ears to the truth, and live in rebellion. Others compromise the Word of God to accommodate their own fleshly desires. James cautions:

James 1:22-25 "But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does."

Obedience is not infeasible. God enables you to obey through His ability, not your own:

Ezekiel 36:27 "I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them."

You can break the power of disobedience in your life by determining, like Jesus, that you will do God's will:

John 5:30 "I can of Myself do nothing. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is righteous, because I do not seek My own will but the will of the Father who sent Me."