God is speaking to me strongly about obedience.
I was reading 1st Kings chapter 13 about a week ago. I’ve been meditating on it ever since. It’s about the young prophet who was told what to do by God, and was obeying God, until he met an older prophet who basically tricked him into disobedience.
God punished the young prophet’s disobedience by death!!!
That might seem crazy, but you know what?
Exactly the same thing happened with Adam and Eve. They died spiritually, and eventually physically, and the whole human race with them.
And why?
Disobeying the voice of the LORD.
It’s interesting to me that in the story of 1st Kings God told the young prophet not to eat anything until he got home. His disobedience centered around partaking of something God told him not to eat. The parallel cannot be a coincidence, because Adam and Eve’s disobedience, and their subsequent deaths also revolved around something God told them not to eat!
Now compare that to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.” So the disciples began to say to one another, “No one brought him anything to eat, did they?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of the one who sent me and to complete his work.-John 4:31-34
The food of Jesus Christ was to do the will of His Father!
It’s not an accident that God said, “Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.”
We live or die by obeying the voice of the LORD!
Unlike Jesus, Adam and Eve refused to live by the bread of the word that was coming from the mouth of God! The young prophet also had a very clear word from God. Had he obeyed it he would also have lived and not died!
Refusing the food that God gives, in preference to that which is within our easy reach, but outside of His will, is the essence of the self-life.
The point is- Obey Jesus at all costs. Obey the voice of the LORD.
God told Abraham-
“And in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, BECAUSE YOU HAVE OBEYED MY VOICE.” -Genesis 22:18
Later on God told Abraham’s son, Isaac, that the reason Isaac’s offspring would be blessed was directly tied to the obedience of his father to the voice of the LORD
“I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and will give to your offspring all these lands. And in your offspring all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, BECAUSE ABRAHAM OBEYED MY VOICE…” -Gen 26:4
God always keeps His promises. Even to all generations!
We can never go wrong by obeying the voice of the LORD.
Today if you hear His voice
I could end there, but I feel like I should add one more thing.
Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says: “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts, as you did in the rebellion, in the day of testing in the wilderness.” -Hebrews 3:7-8
Do not think that God gives idle warnings. I can tell you by my own experience the cost of not heeding His voice. God never speaks without purpose, but somehow like Adam and Eve, and like “the young prophet” who disobeyed the voice of the Lord, we fail to understand the gravity of God’s speech.
I learned the hard way that God’s warnings do not always thunder. Sometimes they come in a whisper. We are very wrong to think that because God speaks to us softly that those words do not have weight. And by that, I mean consequences! It’s not how loud God speaks, but the fact that He’s the one who’s speaking, that matters.
Perhaps one of the most important lessons I’ve ever learned when it comes to hearing the voice of the Lord…