Class 3: A Life Of Obedience | Salvation Made Simple

If you've just given your life to Jesus, or you're ready to grow deeper in your faith, this is for you. Hi, I'm Bri, and today we're talking about obedience. Now, I know when you hear the word obedience, it's like, do I want to know more about that? Here's what I want you to know. Two roles that you need to be very, very sure of in your relationship with God is that, number one, God is a loving father. He loves you and can't love you any more than he already does, because he loves you fully and completely. And the second role is that we are God's children. If he's a father, then we are his children. And God is the best dad that anybody can have. That means he loves his children very well, and he wants to protect them. So when we talk about the word obedience, I want you to have a clear picture of who we're talking about. When we're talking about God, we're talking about him being the best father you could ever have in your entire life. And when he gives instructions to us, he gives it out of love. Now when you think about obedience, usually you think about children, and we are in the role of children when it comes to God the Father. And children have different types of relationships with obedience. Three of them I want to point out today. There are some children who their relationship with obedience is pretty resistant, and we'll call that disobedient. These children decide to do what they want to do, how they want to do it, no matter what the instruction is that's given to them. Then there's some children who obey, but they obey out of fear, because they're afraid to get in trouble, and so they do what they're supposed to do so that they don't make the big bad authority figure mad. Then there are children who obey out of love, because they know they are so well loved,

and their caretaker, their parent, their authority figure is giving them instructions because they love them, and they have their best interests in mind. When I think about obedience, I think about myself as a child. My brother and I, my brother who's three years older than me, we had two different kind of relationships with obedience. My brother was more, let's say, creative. He did what he wanted to do, when he wanted to do it, and some would go as far to say maybe was disobedient in certain ways. Me, on the other hand, I was obedient for the most part, but only out of fear, because I was afraid to be in trouble. I was afraid to get a spanking, or to be on punishment, or whatever the punishment may be. This is the thing when it comes to obedience. You can be a disobedient believer, and let me be honest that all of us at some point or another are disobedient. We could be believers that are obedient to God, but out of fear, and at some point or another, every single one of us have been obedient out of fear, or we can lean into being obedient, but out of love, knowing that God has his best interest in mind for us. As a matter of fact, in Jeremiah 29 and 11, this is the Lord speaking. It says, For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord. They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. Being a child of God is knowing that God has our best interest in mind. Eventually, slowly but surely in our relationship with him, we begin to trust that if he gives us an instruction, if that's instruction in his word, or an instruction we hear in our heart, that if he gives us that instruction, we begin to trust that he's giving it to us out of love. That in turn makes us want to obey because it makes us want to love him back. That's essentially what the type of obedience that God is looking for. He's not looking for disobedience and sometimes delayed obedience.

He's not looking for obedience out of fear because that is not a relational obedience. He's looking for a real life relationship with you and with me, and that is obedience out of love. In John 14 and 15, the message version, I love how it says this. This is Jesus talking. It says, If you love me, show it by doing what I've told you. If you love me, Jesus says, show me by being obedient to what I've asked you and told you to do. Obedience doesn't earn our salvation. All it does is demonstrates it. And as we grow in our relationship with God, we start to love God back. And when he gives us instructions, we have the choice to obey out of love, obey out of fear, or disobey what God has given to us. This is the beautiful thing about obeying out of love, loving God back, knowing he loves me and loving him back with my obedience, is that sometimes obeying looks like discipline and other times it comes out of desire. What do I mean by that? Okay. responsibility you have in life, okay? So you may be a parent, you have children, and there are things that you have to do as a parent that sometimes you wanna do and sometimes you don't wanna do, but you love your children, so you decide to do it. One of those things is getting up on a Saturday morning when your children are awake, but you don't necessarily wanna be awake, okay? You wanna sleep in today, but your children have all this energy,

they wanna spend time with you, they wanna go outside and play, whatever the case may be. There are some days that you'll wake up and you'll decide to get out of bed and spend time with your children out of discipline, doing it because you know this is the type of parent you wanna be. So even though you don't desire to do it, because you have a future intended goal for yourself, you know you can be more than who you are today, you're gonna do it out of discipline. In Proverbs 12 and one, it says, to learn, you must love discipline. As a matter of fact, it says, it is stupid to hate correction, meaning that there's certain things that we do obeying God out of discipline. It's not because I want to, my heart may not even be fully leaned into it, but what I know is if I read my word as it tells me to meditate on scripture, if I read my word and if I have a discipline around that, it's gonna change the way I think and it's gonna change the way I show up. I see the future me, and because I see the future me, I'm gonna discipline myself around that and I'm gonna obey God. Then there are times, there may be some Saturday mornings that your children come and wake you up

and you actually have a desire. You wanna get up, you wanna spend time with them, even if you're tired, even if it's been a long week, even if you don't know what you're gonna feed them next, like is it gonna be cereal pancakes? I have no idea, but I wanna get up because I desire to be with you. I desire to be this type of parent. And that is also a part of our relationship with God. Sometimes we obey out of discipline because we know this is what I know is best. So although my emotions, my feelings, even my whole entire body doesn't wanna do this, I'm gonna do it out of discipline. Then there are times we do it out of desire because we just feel emotionally a connection to God. And because we feel that connection to him, it causes us to want to obey him. David talks about this in Psalms 119 and 97. It says, oh, how I love your law. It is my meditation all the day. There are times in our relationship with God that we want to know what his instructions are for us. We want to know what is it that you want me to do, God, because I have a desire to do what you are asking me to do. I love your law. And even if you grew up as a kid that maybe you lean more towards disobedience or obeying out of fear like myself,

we all get another path opened up to us when we receive the gift of salvation. And that is obedience out of love where discipline and desire meet and we're able to obey the instructions that God has given us. Now, if you're wondering where are God's instructions, number one, you can go to the word of God, the Bible. There are tons of instructions that God gives us in the word and he's asking us on a day-to-day basis, will you follow my commands? Will you obey my instructions? One of those things that he talks to us about in scripture is baptism. Baptism is a public declaration of an inward decision. You've already made the decision to receive this free gift of salvation and congratulations to you, okay? You made this decision already. Baptism is just telling the entire world, hey, I made this decision. I have a new relationship that I'm walking in now. In Matthew 28, 19 through 20, it says, therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you and be sure of this, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. So what baptism is,

it's really just letting other people know that you are now in a relationship with God. It doesn't save you. It doesn't take you to heaven. You are already got a ticket into heaven just because you received salvation. But baptism shows that you belong to Jesus. And in that scripture, it tells us to baptize, go make disciples and follow my commands. There are instructions that now you as a believer, new instructions that you are to align your entire life around. And baptism is one of that. Following Jesus means allowing him to lead in every area of your life. And this obedience, once you say yes to God and you obey him out of love, knowing he loves you first. This activates spiritual growth. So if you want to grow in God, and you want to see your faith grow, and you want to grow in your relationship with him, continue to obey God. Ask him, what are the instructions that you want to give me? What are you asking me to do? And give me a heart to obey you, out of love. Not out of fear, not delayed obedience, and not disobedience, but out of love. If today you decide that you want to get baptized, but not just baptized on your own, you want to come to Transformation Church and be baptized,

all you have to do is go to our website or text BAPTISM to 828282 for more information on how to get baptized at TC. We love to have you here. We're so grateful for you. Go out and live a transformed life.