By Lane Corley
Obedience is where the rubber meets the road in the Christian life. The Wheel Illustration was a tool a friend used to help me grow in my faith. If you’re unfamiliar with it, it is a simple way to help someone solidify the basics in the Christian life, identifying two verses with six topics that are must for believers. It’s the start of the Navigators Topical Memory System. Jesus is the Center of the Wheel. Fellowship, Witnessing, The Word of God, and Prayer are the spokes. But where the rubber meets the road is OBEDIENCE. It’s not enough just to know truth about Christianity. Putting it into practice through obedience is where the Christian life takes off. This is what I found out as I grew in my faith as a young believer. I struggled to make sense of church, as many do. But when I combined what I was learning, with active doing, the lights began to come on.
Now, we don’t obey, so that we can be accepted by God. We’re accepted by God, because of Jesus’ work on the cross. We also don’t obey and work in our own power. We’re empowered by a resurrected and ascended Christ, who has sent His Spirit to be present with us as we follow him. The work of Christ and the power of Christ is promised to us when we believe and are experienced in full as we obey.
Your obedience to God puts you on the road to spiritual maturity, fruitfulness, and a growing faith in God’s power. Disobedience is a ditch, a flat tire, a dead end for spiritual growth.
What command of Christ have you neglected in your Christian life? Have you been fully obedient to everything Christ has asked you to do? If you had to describe the wheels of your Christian life, what would they be like? In need of repair? Ready to for the road?
Lane Corley is a church planting strategist for Louisiana Baptists and is pastor of the Bridge Church in Madisonville. This editorial first was published on his blogsite.
