A Christian devotional on living out faith through daily obedience. The speaker argues that loving Jesus means following His commands, not just professing belief. He emphasizes forgiveness as essential to worship: if offense lives in your heart, you must address it before approaching God.
Chapters
I just want to remind us that we have to follow instructions. We have to follow instructions. When God has given us commands, we actually have to practice the commands daily in our everyday life. For some reason, we think that because we love God, that that absolves us of responsibility because Jesus died on the cross and that means the work is finished. And And he did die on the cross for us, and there's nothing we can do to save ourselves. But we still live in a sin-fallen world, right? We're not in eternity yet. And because we're not in eternity, that means that there are things that you still have to do to form that agreement with the finished work. Of the cross. That means you cannot praise your way out of responsibility. For example, when the scripture says if you're standing at this altar and you're praying and you realize that you have an offense in your heart with someone, you are to stop praying, to stop praying, to leave this altar and go deal with whatever's going on in your heart. Jesus was very clear about this, but for some reason we swing way to the left. There are those of us who swing way to the left and we say things like, it was the enemy, it was the devil. Was it, or was it your choices? Or we swing all the way to the right and say, God's gonna fight for me. Yeah, he's fighting for you, but part of him fighting for you is you actually doing The thing that he told you to do, which is to deal with the offense, which is to forgive. You actually have to do it. It's not just enough to believe it. You have to practice it. You have to do it. So this whole like we're not saved by our works—we're not—but you still have work to do. So may God empower you to do and practice the scriptures that you love and recite all of the time. Because you want to have the right thing to say, and I understand wanting to have the right thing to say. But the word of God is not just about having the right thing to say. It's never been about that. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. That means if he's the life, that means that I need to practice what he actually said and live my life in such a way that it continues to form what I already believe. So that I can bear fruit. That's what it looks like to abide in the vine, to practice what he said. So God bless you.
