loving obedience

Affection Based obedience is the strongest type of obedience because it flows from experiencing Jesus' affections. It is the most consistent obedience because a lovesick person will endure anything for love. People in love are untouchable. Freedom is found in uniting with Christ.

So what? It says we love God by obeying his commands in John 14, not because we have to but because we love him so much that we wouldn't have it any other way. Love requires the wholehearted pursuit of obedience in both our attitudes (purity, humility) and actions (service). How are you going to display your loving obedience today to God as well as to others (your parents, friends, and Loved ones).

Entering the Company of the Great Explorers

My gender seems to need little encouragement. It comes naturally, like our innate love of maps. In 1260 Marco Polo headed off to find China, and in 1967, when I was seven, I tried to dig a hole straight through from our backyard with my friend Danny Wilson. We gave up at about eight feet, but it made a great fort. Hannibal crosses his famous Alps, and there comes a day in a boy’s life when he first crosses the street and enters the company of the great explorers. Scott and Amundsen race for the South Pole, Peary and Cook vie for the North, and when last summer I gave my boys some loose change and permission to ride their bikes down to the store to buy a soda, you’d have thought I’d given them a charter to go find the equator. Magellan sails due west, around the tip of South America—despite warnings that he and his crew will drop off the end of the earth—and Huck Finn heads off down the Mississippi ignoring similar threats. Powell follows the Colorado into the Grand Canyon, even though—no, because—no one has done it before and everyone is saying it can’t be done.

(Wild at Heart , 4) John Eldredge

Living the New Life!

Colossians 3:1-11

1 Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand. 2 Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth. 3 For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 And when Christ, who is your[a] life, is revealed to the whole world, you will share in all his glory.
5 So put to death the sinful, earthly things lurking within you. Have nothing to do with sexual immorality, impurity, lust, and evil desires. Don’t be greedy, for a greedy person is an idolater, worshiping the things of this world. 6 Because of these sins, the anger of God is coming.[b] 7 You used to do these things when your life was still part of this world. 8 But now is the time to get rid of anger, rage, malicious behavior, slander, and dirty language. 9 Don’t lie to each other, for you have stripped off your old sinful nature and all its wicked deeds. 10 Put on your new nature, and be renewed as you learn to know your Creator and become like him. 11 In this new life, it doesn’t matter if you are a Jew or a Gentile,[c] circumcised or uncircumcised, barbaric, uncivilized,[d] slave, or free. Christ is all that matters, and he lives in all of us.

Today set your mind,your heart on things of God! Get rid of anything in you that is of this world. This is not an easy thing to do but it will grow you closer to the heart of God. This is the desire of God's heart!