{"id":14918,"date":"2016-11-02T09:35:45","date_gmt":"2016-11-02T13:35:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=14918"},"modified":"2016-11-02T09:41:28","modified_gmt":"2016-11-02T13:41:28","slug":"obedience-or-independence-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=14918","title":{"rendered":"Obedience or Independence?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>If you love Me, keep My commandments. \u2014<a href=\"http:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?version=31&amp;search=John+14%3A15\" target=\"_blank\">John 14:15<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/aUT7eBkqMR4\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><br \/>\nOur Lord never insists on obedience. He stresses very definitely what we <em>ought<\/em> to do, but He never <em>forces<\/em> us to do it. We have to obey Him out of a oneness of spirit with Him. That is why whenever our Lord talked about discipleship, He prefaced it with an \u201cIf,\u201d meaning, \u201cYou do not need to do this unless you desire to do so.\u201d \u201c<em>If<\/em> anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself\u2026\u201d (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Luke+9:23\">Luke 9:23<\/a>). In other words, \u201cTo be My disciple, let him give up his right to himself to Me.\u201d Our Lord is not talking about our eternal position, but about our being of value to Him in this life here and now. That is why He sounds so stern (see\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Luke+14:26\">Luke 14:26<\/a>). Never try to make sense from these words by separating them from the One who spoke them.<\/p>\n<p>The Lord does not give me rules, but He makes His standard very clear. If my relationship to Him is that of love, I will do what He says without hesitation. If I hesitate, it is because I love someone I have placed in competition with Him, namely, myself. Jesus Christ will not force me to obey Him, but I must. And as soon as I obey Him, I fulfill my spiritual destiny. My personal life may be crowded with small, petty happenings, altogether insignificant. But if I obey Jesus Christ in the seemingly random circumstances of life, they become pinholes through which I see the face of God. Then, when I stand face to face with God, I will discover that through my obedience thousands were blessed. When God\u2019s redemption brings a human soul to the point of obedience, it always produces. If I obey Jesus Christ, the redemption of God will flow through me to the lives of others, because behind the deed of obedience is the reality of Almighty God.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div class=\"col-sm-4\">\n<p><!--\n\n\n<div class=\"mobile-sharing-button\"><\/div>\n\n\n--><\/p>\n<div class=\"top-sharing\">\n<div class=\"sharedaddy sd-sharing-enabled\">\n<div class=\"robots-nocontent sd-block sd-social sd-social-icon-text sd-sharing\">\n<div class=\"sd-content\">\n<ul><!--\n \t\n\n<li class=\"odb-share-whatsapp\"><a onclick=\"javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview('\/outgoing\/#print');\" rel=\"nofollow\" class=\"share-whatsapp sd-button\" href=\"whatsapp:\/\/send?text=: \" title=\"\"><span><i class=\"fa fa-whatsapp\"><\/i> <span class=\"share-label\"><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/li>\n\n\n--><\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; If you love Me, keep My commandments. \u2014John 14:15 Our Lord never insists on obedience. He stresses very definitely what we ought to do, but He never forces us to do it. We have to obey Him out of a oneness of spirit with Him. That is why whenever our Lord talked about discipleship, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14918"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14918"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14920,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14918\/revisions\/14920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}