Obedience and Love

    This devotional is from a spiritual mentor of mine, whom I have never met yet, but have listened to and learned from for many years.  Nancy Demoss Wolgemuth is a gentle-hearted Bible teacher, who teaches women to study the Bible, encouraging them in their relationship with Jesus. I needed this this week and I wanted to share with you. This is excerpts from a study she taught called "Seeking Him" on a Revive Our Hearts podcast. I have linked the full transcript below. I hope you will take the time to listen to or read it all at some point. 

 I think most of you are probably familiar with the story of Helen Keller. You may have seen the video or the play called The Miracle Worker. When Helen was nineteen months old, she was struck with a fever that left her blind and deaf. When she was six, her parents hired a tutor whose name was Anne Sullivan, to come and help this child develop some skills.

When Anne first came to live in the Keller home, you remember that Helen was very wild, uncontrollable. She was undisciplined. She often threw temper tantrums and nobody could manage this child. Helen later attributed those temper tantrums to her frustration over her inability to communicate.

In her autobiography, Anne Sullivan, the tutor, the teacher, tells about a scene that happened when she first came to the Keller home. It’s actually a letter that Anne wrote to a friend shortly after she arrived at the home. You may remember this scene if you’ve seen the movie. It’s the scene where Anne’s starting to teach Helen table manners. Here’s how she describes that.

I had a battle royal with Helen this morning. Helen’s manners are appalling. She’s puts her hands in our plates and helps herself, and when the dishes are passed, she grabs them and takes out whatever she wants. This morning I would not let her put her hand in my plate. She persisted, and a contest of wills followed. Helen was lying on the floor, kicking and screaming and trying to pull my chair from under me. She kept this up for half an hour.

Anne goes on to describe some of the things that took place during that half hour. Then she says:

Finally she came back to her place and began to eat her breakfast with her fingers. I gave her a spoon, which she threw on the floor. I forced her out of the chair and made her pick it up. Finally, I succeeded in getting her back in her chair again. I held the spoon in her hand, compelling her to take up the food with it and put it in her mouth.

In a few minutes she yielded and finished her breakfast peaceably. But when she had finished, she threw the spoon on the floor and ran toward the door. Finding it locked, she began to kick and scream all over again. It was another hour before I succeeded in getting her napkin folded.

Then Anne, the teacher, says this telling sentence. 

I suppose I shall have many such battles with the little woman before she learns the only two essential things I can teach her: obedience and love.

Then in another letter to a friend, Anne wrote:

I saw clearly that it was useless to try to teach Helen language or anything else until she learned to obey me. I thought about it a great deal, and the more I think, the more certain I am that obedience is the gateway through which knowledge, yes, and love, too, enter the mind of the child.¹

Now, it’s true of children, but it’s also true of adults. Obedience is the gateway through which knowledge and love can enter our minds. Obedience. I think obedience is one of the most basic, fundamental, foundational lessons in life. It’s like learning to walk. Until you have acquired that basic skill, you’re not going to get very far in life.

 Obedience. It’s a key to experiencing personal and corporate revival.

Obedience is the pathway to blessing. It’s the means of protection. It’s the means of joy. It’s the means to finding God’s best in our lives.
You can’t obey God. Jesus is the only person who has ever lived who perfectly obeyed His heavenly Father. But because Jesus lives in us, we have a new life, a new power, and we can now obey God because we have the life of Christ within us. That’s why it’s so important that we learn to surrender to Christ within us, to let Him live the Christian life in and through us.

I love that verse in Philippians chapter 2, verse 13: “It is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure” (NKJV). It’s God within us, it’s the Holy Spirit of Christ within me that gives me the desire to obey God and then gives me the power to obey God.

The word in the Old Testament Hebrew that is translated obey is a word that also means to hear. To hear the Word of God is not supposed to be a passive experience. It requires an obedient response.

 I want to tell you there is no substitute for obedience to the Word of God. I don’t care how much you pray. I don’t care how much you study your Bible. I mean, I do care. But when it comes to the final analysis, how much you’re involved in ministry, all the kinds of Christian service you do. You can do all those things, but if you’re not obeying the Word of God, it’s useless. Worse than that, God says, "I don’t want all that stuff if you’re not obedient."

A. W. Tozier said, “Revival will come when prayer is no longer used as a substitute for obedience.” There is no substitute for obedience.

You can listen or read the entire lesson from Nancy here. I think you will find it to be a blessing, as I have. 

I pray we are all challenged to be obedient to the Word of God this week. 

💓 Heather Sparks💓