Quotes about Obedience

Is God's voice the loudest voice in your life? That's the question. If the answer is no, that's the problem.

The beauty of obedience is this: it relieves us of responsibility.

Has God ever called you to throw something down? Something in which you find your security or put your identity? It's awfully hard to let go, isn't it? It feels like you are jeopardizing your future. And it feels like you could lose what is most important to you. But that is when you discover who you really are.

Many people assume that being a Christian means you follow all the rules and have your life together. They assume that "Christian" equals "good person"—when the opposite is true. The gospel is not about what we can do for God (good advice), but what God has done for us (good news). Jesus lived a perfect life precisely because we can't.

This book attempts to provide such careful instruction so that we might understand and recover faithfulness to God's Word on something that is not essential for salvation but that is both important and necessary for obedience—what the local church is to be and to do.

As in every other topic, our regular practice as Christians should be to seek God's will in his Word, either by explicit command or by reasoning from principles in the Word. We want to see that the answer is in the Bible.

People can creatively devise how to approach a mute God, but they must listen to a speaking God.

We are humble because we know we are not the power in salvation. We are obedient because we know we possess the light.

Again, we are humble because we know we are not the power to change the heart. But we are obedient because we know we are the necessary means ordained by our sovereign God by which the light comes to those in darkness.

Whatsoever we give the supremacy of the inward man to, whatsoever we love most, whatsoever we trust most, whatsoever we fear most, whatsoever we joy and delight most, whatsoever we obey most—that is our god."117 In the end, one's love indicates one's God118—for no human lives without loving.119

Too often Christians today have only two gears on their theological bike: essential and unimportant. If something is not essential for salvation, it is treated as unimportant and therefore dismissable. But the Bible presents us with a number of matters that are not essential for salvation but which nonetheless are important, even necessary, for obedience to God's Word.

For a Christian, our fears about the future are rooted in those places where our will differs from God's will.