What you want is behind the door.

OBEDIENCE - A WAY OF LIFE:

I remember once Priscilla was making faces. After she had finished she said: "Now daddy I will do them backwards.” So she turned her head around so we could not see her and made those faces. We laughed very hard! Why? It was humorous because it is so simplistic. Keeping it simple makes things easy! How can I live the Christian life? Simple – Obey!

Vance Havner wrote in Moments of Decision  page 110

"Some Bible teaching is like swimming lessons on dry land. We have been taught all the things commanded of the Great Commission but not to observe them.  Some know so much doctrine that an encyclopedia could not hold it, but what they know by experience could be put in a pocket notebook. We are afflicted with rocking-chair religion and shade-tree theology. We are like a man whose suitcase is covered with foreign hotel labels but who has never been out of his home state."

Obedience is a door for many things

(1) Opens Door of Repentance

We will blow it, because we are fallen and have a very strong sin nature. When we have fallen into sin, the door that leads to repentance is obedience. Yes we feel remorse, yes we feel regret, but that is confession. Repentance is a change of direction, which is a matter of action. When we, through our will and our faith, choose to obey, the door of repentance has been opened.

Deuteronomy 4:25–31 “In the future, when you have children and grandchildren and have lived in the land a long time, do not corrupt yourselves by making idols of any kind. This is evil in the sight of the Lord your God and will arouse his anger. ²⁶ “Today I call on heaven and earth as witnesses against you. If you break my covenant, you will quickly disappear from the land you are crossing the Jordan to occupy. You will live there only a short time; then you will be utterly destroyed.²⁷ For the Lord will scatter you among the nations, where only a few of you will survive.²⁸ There, in a foreign land, you will worship idols made from wood and stone—gods that neither see nor hear nor eat nor smell.²⁹ But from there you will search again for the Lord your God. And if you search for him with all your heart and soul, you will find him. ³⁰ “In the distant future, when you are suffering all these things, you will finally return to the Lord your God and listen to what he tells you.³¹ For the Lord your God is a merciful God; he will not abandon you or destroy you or forget the solemn covenant he made with your ancestors.

Deuteronomy 30:1–4  “In the future, when you experience all these blessings and curses I have listed for you, and when you are living among the nations to which the Lord your God has exiled you, take to heart all these instructions.² If at that time you and your children return to the Lord your God, and if you obey with all your heart and all your soul all the commands I have given you today,³ then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes. He will have mercy on you and gather you back from all the nations where he has scattered you.⁴ Even though you are banished to the ends of the earth, the Lord your God will gather you from there and bring you back again.

* We spend too much time on sorrow and not enough on obedience. What that shows us is even our sin is all about “US”! We need to be proactive in how we handle our failures – obedience is that door! When we look at our sin, the best thing we can do is do the opposite of what our sin is.

For example: If we covet and gossip and are judgmental: we should do what Phil 4:8 instructs:

Philippians 4:8 Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.

If we waste time:

Ephesians 5:16 making the most of your time, because the days are evil.

If you had a bank that credited your account each morning with $86,400 that

carried over no balance from day to day, allowed you to keep no cash on

account, and every evening canceled whatever part of the sum you failed to use during the day, just what would you do?  Draw out every cent of course. 

Well, you have such a bank and its name is "Time". Every morning it credits you with 86,400 seconds. Every night it rules off, as lost, whatever part of this sum you have failed to invest to good purposes. It allows no overdrafts. Each day it opens a new account for you. Each night it burns the record of the day. If you failed to use the day's deposits, the loss is yours.

Repentance is difficult, but it accomplishes what our inner man desires! Like a coach – it makes us build a discipline in our life that...when arrived at...we realize this is what we wanted from the beginning!

Tom Landry was a great American Football coach. He said this  - "The job of a football coach is to make men do what they don't want to do in order to achieve what they've always wanted to be!"

Is repentance your coach? I know if you love Jesus you hate your failures...so do I. But the question is...what are you doing about it. Confession is good, but it is only talk. Repentance is action. Think of a sin you are struggling with. What is 1 action you could take to change your direction away from that sin?