We walk before God

'In the instance of King Hezekiah, it was a potent plea which changed God's decree that he should die and not live. The stricken ruler called upon God to remember how that he had walked before Him in truth, and with a perfect heart. With God, this counted. He hearkened to the petition, and, as a result, death found his approach to Hezekiah barred for fifteen years.'

Quoted from- 'THE NECESSITY OF PRAYER  By E.M. BOUNDS' (Excerpt 56)

Isa 38:1  In those days was Hezekiah sick unto death. And Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz came unto him, and said unto him, Thus saith the LORD, Set thine house in order: for thou shalt die, and not live.
Isa 38:2  Then Hezekiah turned his face toward the wall, and prayed unto the LORD,
Isa 38:3  And said, Remember now, O LORD, I beseech thee, how I have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good in thy sight. And Hezekiah wept sore.
Isa 38:4  Then came the word of the LORD to Isaiah, saying,
Isa 38:5  Go, and say to Hezekiah, Thus saith the LORD, the God of David thy father, I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: behold, I will add unto thy days fifteen years.
Isa 38:6  And I will deliver thee and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria: and I will defend this city.
Isa 38:7  And this shall be a sign unto thee from the LORD, that the LORD will do this thing that he hath spoken;
Isa 38:8  Behold, I will bring again the shadow of the degrees, which is gone down in the sun dial of Ahaz, ten degrees backward. So the sun returned ten degrees, by which degrees it was gone down.

Hezekiah DID pray, and we are talking about prayer. Told by a prophet of God that he was going to die, telling him to get his affairs in order, Hezekiah did not do what he was told. Instead of setting his house in order he turned away from everyone and faced a wall, and then he prayed. Remember, Hezekiah was SICK, very, very sick and that sickness was going to kill him. In his sickness he turned from everyone and prayed.  His words….

REMEMBER,  O LORD…

He was asking the Lord to remember, God does not forget.  He was reminding God, wanting Him to remember…

...HOW HE WALKED BEFORE HIM IN TRUTH, WITH A PERFECT HEART, DOING WHAT IS GOOD IN GOD'S EYES.

Can we say the same to God?

Are we walking before God in truth?
Are we walking before God with a perfect heart?
Are we doing what is good in God's eyes?

Can we, like Hezekiah, pray that prayer? Can we? And if we cannot, we have to ask ourselves why not?

No, we are NOT perfect and we will not be perfect, only our SAVIOR is perfect and He and He alone will forever be perfect and ANY perfection we reflect is HIS. We are told to be perfect as God is Perfect…

Mat_5:48  Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

We cannot ignore what God wants from us. We must be devoted to Him and devoted to a life pleasing to HIM!

We must walk in GOD'S TRUTH, we must walk with a PERFECT HEART, and we must be doing what is GOOD in GOD'S EYES.

ALL through HIS grace, HIS LOVE!

Spirit of Obediece

'Prayer puts into those who sincerely pray a spirit of obedience, for the spirit of disobedience is not of God and belongs not to God's praying hosts.'

Quoted from- 'THE NECESSITY OF PRAYER  By E.M. BOUNDS' (Excerpt 55)

Gal 5:7  Ye did run well; who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth?
Gal 5:8  This persuasion cometh not of him that calleth you

When we don't obey the truth we are not honoring God, we are not God's.

Read the following...

Rom 2:7  To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life:
Rom 2:8  But unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath,
Rom 2:9  Tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile;
Rom 2:10  But glory, honour, and peace, to every man that worketh good, to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile

When we DO NOT OBEY the truth we are obeying UNRIGHTEOUSNESS!

Tribulation and anguish waits for those who do evil!

Those who work good will have glory, honor, and peace.

How can we say our obedience doesn't matter? How?

'Prayer puts into those who sincerely pray a spirit of obedience, for the spirit of disobedience is not of God and belongs not to God's praying hosts.'

A spirit of obedience is something we truly need! If we are SINCERELY praying then we will receive a spirit of obedience!  If we aren't praying in sincerity we cannot expect to have a spirit of obedience, a desire to obey rather than disobey.  We must PRAY, we must obey.

By the grace of God may we obey, and pray to obey.

Why can we ever imagine God would have us disobey, ever?

Please, Lord, help us!

In YOUR LOVE!

We cannot accept our sinning

'Obedience to God counts tremendously in the realm of prayer. This fact cannot be emphasized too much or too often. To plead for a religious faith which tolerates sinning, is to cut the ground from under the feet of effectual praying. To excuse sinning by the plea that obedience to God is not possible to unregenerate men, is to discount the character of the new birth, and to place men where effective praying is not possible. At one time Jesus broke out with a very pertinent and personal question, striking right to the core of disobedience, when He said: "Why call ye Me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things I say?" Luke 6:46

He who would pray, must obey. He who would get anything out of his prayers, must be in perfect harmony with God. Prayer puts into those who sincerely pray a spirit of obedience, for the spirit of disobedience is not of God and belongs not to God's praying hosts.'

Quoted from- 'THE NECESSITY OF PRAYER  By E.M. BOUNDS' (Excerpt 54)

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Luk 6:47  Whosoever cometh to me, and heareth my sayings, and doeth them, I will shew you to whom he is like:
Luk 6:48  He is like a man which built an house, and digged deep, and laid the foundation on a rock: and when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon that house, and could not shake it: for it was founded upon a rock.
Luk 6:49  But he that heareth, and doeth not, is like a man that without a foundation built an house upon the earth; against which the stream did beat vehemently, and immediately it fell; and the ruin of that house was great.

Jesus ASKS us WHY we are calling Him Lord, Lord when we are NOT doing the things He says!

Then Jesus goes on to say those who hear what He says and then do what He says that, that person is protected against the storms because they are founded upon HIM- the Rock.

Jesus doesn't stop there, He goes on to say that those who do not do what He says are not protected against storms.

So why, I have to ask something I've asked a lot of times, why do we imagine that we do NOT have to do what Jesus says? WHY?!

Truly, as E.M. Bounds wrote-

'To plead for a religious faith which tolerates sinning, is to cut the ground from under the feet of effectual praying'

-we CANNOT tolerate sinning!   We cannot excuse our sinning!  We cannot ACCEPT our sinning!  We cannot be among those who say we cannot obey! To do that is to say we do not want to be among God's saints.

Read this--

Rev_14:12  Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.

HERE are those KEEPING the COMMANDMENTS of GOD and the FAITH of JESUS!

They are obeying! Here are those who are obeying!

Why would we be told such a thing if such a thing were impossible? We wouldn't be! God would never tell us that there will be saints who keep His commandments if there can't be saints who keep the commandments.  The sooner we BELIEVE it is possible through CHRIST to keep the commandments, the better. The sooner we can truly be obedient to OUR God, our Savior!

By God's grace may we be HIS, may we OBEY as He would have us OBEY, may we hear and do what He says so that we may truly be HIS as this life of a storm beats as us daily.

All in HIS GRACE! All in HIS LOVE!

Jesus said- Before Abraham was, I am

"Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of My Father which is in heaven."

To this great deliverance may be added another:
"If ye keep My commandments ye shall abide in My love, even as I have kept my
Father's commandments, and abide in His love." Joh_15:10

"The Christian's trade," says Luther, "is prayer." But the Christian has another trade to learn, before he proceeds to learn the secrets of the trade of prayer. He must learn well the trade of perfect obedience to the Father's will. Obedience follows love, and prayer follows obedience. The business of real observance of God's commandments inseparably accompanies the business of real praying.'

Quoted from- 'THE NECESSITY OF PRAYER  By E.M. BOUNDS' (Excerpt 53)

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IF you keep Christ's commandments….

Are you reading this?  IF you keep Christ's commandments you WILL abide in His LOVE.

Jesus KEPT His Father's commandments and abides in His Father's love.

Does this mean then if Jesus did NOT keep His Father's commandments He would not have abided in His love?

That's exactly what it means.

To be SINLESS- Jesus could not have broken a single commandment given by His Father. The same commandments that JESUS gave, Jesus was there as the moral law was given. Jesus did NOT contest a single commandment given by His Father and HE COULD HAVE, HE WAS THERE!

Joh 8:58  Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.

Jesus fully agreed with the moral law, the only law put into the ark of the covenant.

Romans 7:7, 12 -- I had not known sin, but by the, law, the law had said, Thou shalt not covet. Wherefore the law is holy.

Note - The law that contains the commandment - "Thou shalt not covet" - is the Ten Commandment law. This law Paul declares to be holy.

Jesus kept the commandments and those commandments are the same we should keep they are HIS.  Loving God and loving our fellow man are summed up in the ten moral commandments.

To ever imagine the ten moral laws were done away with is foolishness, there could be NO sin without them because sin is the breaking of those laws!

Is it any wonder that we need to OBEY? We do! We need to live by the moral law our God has given to us to live by. When we fail we do need to repent and seek forgiveness, but we must NEVER imagine we should disobey that law, NEVER.

By the GRACE of our LORD we are able to keep HIS LAW through HIM!

All in HIS LOVE!

We receive because we obey and seek to please God, not ourselves

'John gives the reason for answered prayer in the passage previously quoted: "And whatsoever we ask we receive of Him because we keep His commandments and do those things which are pleasing in His sight." 1Jn_3:22

Seeing that the keeping of God's commandments is here set forth as the reason why He  answers prayer, it is to be reasonably assumed that we can keep God's commandments, can do those things which are pleasing to Him. Would God make the keeping of His commandments a condition of effectual prayer, think you, if He knew we could not keep His statutes? Surely, surely not!

Obedience can ask with boldness at the Throne of grace, and those who exercise it are the only ones who can ask, after that fashion. The disobedient folk are timid in their approach and hesitant in their supplication. They are halted by reason of their wrongdoing. The requesting yet obedient child comes into the presence of his father with confidence and boldness. His very consciousness of obedience gives him courage and frees him from the dread born of disobedience.'

Quoted from- 'THE NECESSITY OF PRAYER  By E.M. BOUNDS' (Excerpt 52)

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Yet as I read the above I can't help but continue to think of my constant failure to keep God's commandments. They are SO much more than rigorous duties.  They are so much more than the mere keeping from thievery,  from the taking of another's life, from the letter of the law so to speak. Jesus came and revealed that the intents of hearts are the truth of God's commandments. Our thoughts, those we dwell upon and feed, are just as evil as the act committed. Refraining from physical adultery while indulging in mental adultery is evil. Fantasizing about murder is just as bad as murder. No sin should be entertained, not even in our thoughts.

Thoughts do creep in that we would rather not have and they must immediately be thrust out, not indulged! Even if they continue to come back over and over we have to fight against them, it is a spiritual war!

So when I read the above I really can't help but think on the constant fight I'm battling and oftentimes failing at. It's a FOREVER need of FORGIVENESS, something I don't think we can ever forget. To say we obey the commandments of God and therefore can come with confidence to Him in prayer, is truth. I didn't write this…

 "And whatsoever we ask we receive of Him because we keep His commandments and do those things which are pleasing in His sight." 1Jn_3:22

E.M. Bounds did not write that. GOD wrote that! Our actions matter! Our obedience matters! How can we divorce the two?  We kneel at the throne of grace and we seek to obey, we don't kneel at the throne of grace and then go our way and sin willfully! We struggle, we war, we fight against all that would keep us from obeying our God. And when I say we struggle, we war, we fight I mean we do so, spiritually we are at war! No, we aren't to physically war with others that would keep us from obeying, but spiritually war against all that would stop us from keeping God's commandments and doing that which is pleasing in HIS SIGHT.

We must obey and the commandments tell us to love and all that means! We are to love GOD, and love each other and when we disobey this and fail in our love towards God or our fellow man then we need to seek forgiveness and that is obeying. We need to repent- to give up doing that wrong, truly give it up even if that means giving it up every single day as we war. We cannot hold onto any sin - we cannot hold onto any failure to love God or our fellow man- we must seek forgiveness and find love and forgiveness through our Savior. Even if we must pray for forgiveness for loving- cherishing any sin- for loving sin, we need to repent and pray for it, pray to come to despise the sinful thing we love.

Satan has warped us in many, many ways and will not stop his work upon us. Thank God, Jesus Christ has the victory over him and that victory is ours!

Please, LORD, keep us in You. Forgive us, help us as we seek to keep Your commandments and do those things which are please in Your sight.

All in YOUR LOVE!

We have no excuse

'Obedience is love, fulfilling every command, love expressing itself. Obedience, therefore, is not a hard demand made upon us, any more than is the service a husband renders his wife, or a wife renders her husband. Love delights to obey, and please whom it loves. There are no hardships in love. There may be exactions, but no irk. There  are no impossible tasks for love.'

(My interjection- All too often today the 'obey' part of wedding vows is left out, why? What does that tell us? It tells us that more and more mankind has inched away from the belief they need to obey anyone.  Seriously. Children are more defiant than ever refusing to obey not only parents but teachers as well. People are more defiant to law enforcement as well. They defy so many and believe they have the right to do so, because they will not be treated what they call 'disrespectfully'. And if they are told to do something they believe it has to be in the proper manner, do not dare give an order but rather a request. Do you see what we've done? We've made the word 'obey' into something bad, something overbearing and too controlling. Telling someone you obey your spouse would garner some very strange reactions. And now we are left with being told we should obey God and right away Satan is there to tell us obeying is for those who cannot think for themselves. Satan tells us we shouldn't have to obey anyone, we should actually be the one obeyed, or at the very least able to live in obedience only to our own selves. )

'This is obedience, running ahead of all and every command. It is love, obeying by anticipation. They greatly err, and even sin, who declare that men are bound to commit iniquity, either because of environment, or heredity, or tendency. God's commands are not grievous. Their ways are ways of pleasantness, and their paths peace. The task which falls to obedience is not a hard one. "For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light."  

Far be it from our heavenly Father, to demand impossibilities of His children. It is possible to please Him in all things, for He is not hard to please. He is neither a hard master, nor an austere lord, "taking up that which he lays not down, and reaping that which he did not sow." Thank God, it is possible for every child of God, to please his heavenly Father! It is really much easier to please Him than to please men. Moreover, we may know when we please Him. This is the witness of the Spirit -- the inward Divine assurance, given to all the children of God that they are doing their Father's will, and that their ways are well-pleasing in His sight.

(My interjection-  This is truth- it is MUCH easier to please God than to please men! This is so true!)

'God's commandments are righteous and founded in justice and wisdom. "Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good." Rom_7:12 "Just and true are Thy ways, Thou King of saints." Rev_15:3 God's commandments, then, can be obeyed by all who seek supplies of grace which enable them to obey. These commandments must be obeyed. God's government is at stake. God's children are under obligation to obey Him; disobedience cannot be permitted. The spirit of rebellion is the very essence of sin. It is repudiation of God's authority, which God cannot tolerate. He never has done so, and a declaration of His attitude was part of the reason the Son of the Highest was made manifest among men: "For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit."

If any should complain that humanity, under the fall, is too weak and helpless to obey these high commands of God, the reply is in order that, through the atonement of Christ, man is enabled to obey. The Atonement is God's Enabling Act. That which God works in us, in regeneration and through the agency of the Holy Spirit, bestows enabling grace sufficient for all that is required of us, under the Atonement. This grace is furnished without measure, in answer to prayer. So that, while God commands, He, at the same time, stands pledged to give us all necessary strength of will and grace of soul to meet His demands. This being true, man is without excuse for his disobedience
and eminently censurable for refusing, or failing, to secure requisite grace, whereby he may serve the Lord with reverence, and with godly fear.'

Quoted from- 'THE NECESSITY OF PRAYER  By E.M. BOUNDS' (Excerpt 51)

(My interjections continued…

'The Atonement is God's enable act' !  TRUTH! We are without excuse!  We cannot willfully disobey and claim the commandments are too hard, they are too unjust for us. Our GOD divested Himself of divinity and relied solely upon the power of the Father God to keep the commandments and because He did that we too are able to keep the commandments, and we do it by the GRACE our Savior gives to us.  More on all of this tomorrow, by the grace of God!

We cannot excuse away our sinning, it doesn't work.

In HIS amazing love!

Bless us Lord! Keep us Lord!

Would God ask us to keep His commandments if it were impossible?

'Does God give commandments which men cannot obey? Is He so arbitrary, so severe, so unloving, as to issue commandments which cannot be obeyed? The answer is that in all the annals of Holy Scripture, not a single instance is recorded of God having commanded any man to do a thing, which was beyond his power. Is God so unjust and so inconsiderate as to require of man that which he is unable to render? Surely not. To infer it, is to slander the character of God.'

Quoted from- 'THE NECESSITY OF PRAYER  By E.M. BOUNDS' (Excerpt 50)


God will never ask us to do the impossible, yet so many believe what He asks is impossible. Why? Because we don't want to obey. Our carnal nature wants to rule and that carnal nature is in opposition to God.

Our natural selves do not want to obey, yet when we CHOOSE to serve God we are choosing to obey God. When we choose to obey God we submit to Him and HE HELPS US to obey Him. He doesn't leave us alone to do this on our own He offers us help.

Joh 14:15  If ye love me, keep my commandments.
Joh 14:16  And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever;
Joh 14:17  Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.
Joh 14:18  I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.

If you love Jesus- OBEY His commandments.
If we obey His commandments the FATHER will give us a Comforter that will live with us forever.

The OBEYING we do is SUBMITTING to the truth that God's commandments are JUST, they are GOOD, they are RIGHTEOUS. They are NOT impossible if we CHOOSE to OBEY.

What point is there in asking someone to obey the impossible?

There is NO POINT at all.

We have to STOP thinking it is impossible to choose to obey. We make choices, hard choices, choices that have us uncomfortable as we fight against our SELFISH desires, our very, very SELF SERVING desires.

If you are asked to choose between self and God, who would you choose?

We almost always choose self first because we have this belief that we are everything, that everything revolves around us and our existence- even God. We believe God only exists because we allow Him to exist and if we choose not to believe He will no longer exist. We are fools!

God is EVERYTHING, without HIM we are NOTHING! So when we choose self over God we are choosing nothing over everything, yet Satan would have us blind to this truth.  We must choose GOD this is choosing self really. When we obey God we are obeying truth and serving ourselves through serving God, this is truth!

Please LORD help us to choose to obey we would choose YOU always YOU.

By YOUR grace!  YOUR love!