Do we even know how to obey God?

Everything you were taught can be put into a few words: Respect and obey God! This is what life is all about. (Ecclesiastes 12:13 CEV)

 That’s the clincher. “Everything you were taught: Respect and obey God.” Four little words that remind me to recenter God as the focus of my life.
 So far, so good, but do we even know how to obey God?
 God gave an impressive set of specific commandments to His people in the Old Testament to guide them in every aspect of their lives. Yet they continually disregarded what He’d instructed and reaped the negative consequences over and over.
 In the New Testament, Jesus taught that all the laws and the prophets depended on just two commandments: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind,” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:36–39)
 Sometimes, trying to figure out the right thing to do in every given situation can be pretty complicated, and I just want God to say, Yes, you can do this, or, No you can’t do that. But then I’m back to realizing that didn’t work too well for the children of Israel. So what’s the answer? How do you “respect and obey God”? I have concluded that part of the reason God didn’t just give us a list of rules to check off is because what He really wants is our hearts, our time, and our efforts to love and get to know Him and pattern our lives around what we know about Him through the life and words of Jesus. —Marie Alvero [1]

When you yield yourself in complete and whole-hearted obedience to God, He can do great things through you. —Jim George

[1] Activated  The Conclusion