The Rise of Obedience Devotional encourages us to obey the Holy Spirit. The stories shared focus on areas where we can challenge ourselves to grow. While reflecting, think about your own past reactions and create action steps for future ones! Disobedience is not a surprise to God. Many other men and women in the Bible fell short. And we may continue to fall short. But let s not stop closing the gap. Lastly, remember to write down your answers to keep for the week. There will be a bonus day at the end that you will need them for! We pray that the Helper will use this to teach you and bring this information into remembrance for times to come. Blessings, Woman With Christ Obedience Definitions of obedience: 1 to hear God's Word and act accordingly; 2 submissive compliance to the commands of one in authority; 3 supreme test of faith in God and reverence for Him; 4 love + trust + action
Please read 1 Kings 19:1-4 (NASB). The Missionary You ve been seriously praying hard about your purpose. And guess what? The Lord finally answered! You are a missionary. Filled with excitement, it was hard to keep to yourself. There are so many thoughts concerning passports, fundraising and other languages. Maybe you ll even be stationed in America. Whatever the details are, you are willing because God just told you what to do with your life! It s summer time, which means vacation with family. It s typical to give up to date information on your life. Your aunt, who is an atheist, asks what your future will look like. Without really thinking about her faith, you declare I m going to be a missionary! Her face dropped and she started arguing, yelling and even cursing at you. You re in shock. Everything was fine until you shared that one sentence. You decided to respond with peace, despite the uproar. Months go by and you still replay that scene in your head. You slowly step away from your purpose by halting your passport application. When people talk about missions, you feel like all eyes are on you because of conviction. You ask yourself if God really called you to be a missionary. You list all of the reasons why you re not qualified. How could He choose me? I m not better than any other missionary that s went before me. Jim Elliot risked his life to share the gospel. Am I ready to go that far? Living out your purpose is prone to opposition. Elijah s life was threatened, but God fought for him. Although Elijah was scared and ran, God still got him back on track. When we run away, God does not entertain our excuses. God commands us to go where He wants. Your obedience also determines your future. Elijah lost his prophet office because of fear. There were 7,000 people God had ready in replace of Elijah. 1. Write down what God has called you to do with as much detail as possible. 2. Besides your calling, what are some key areas where you disobey God daily? 3. What is ONE task that you can do right now to change an area of disobedience?
Please read John 14 (NASB). The Neighbor You just got out of work and walked into your home. It s been a long day. Your dog is so excited to see you. You put your stuff down and head out the door to take your dog for a walk. You notice your neighbor on their porch. It s her and her elderly mother. The mother has been having issues with dementia, and is having an episode. The Holy Spirit sternly says, Walk over there. You begin to say, What about walking my dog? The Spirit says to go anyway. You become filled with fear. I can t do this. What am I going to say? Fear shortly turned into unbelief. You ignore the command. The next day, you see police and ambulance show up in front of your house. You realize they are there for the same neighbor. Something must have happened. You think the elderly mother is dead. They lay the stretcher outside and walk into the house. You pray and pray some more while staring at the stretcher. Out of nowhere, it begins to downpour with rain. It feels like a scene from a movie. The elderly mother comes out alive, and you release the air you ve been holding in. She s alive! But how many more chances are you going to have before your disobedience costs you? Jesus explained that perfect love casts out all fear. He commanded our hearts not be filled with fear. When fear comes, unbelief follows. We deny Jesus. Instead, He sends us the Helper and affirmation. Once we believe these words, we react differently. Jesus questions this unbelief that we have and says that our actions are what will hold up the truth. Love ties in with unbelief and fear. One of the definitions we shared on obedience was love + trust + action. We need to replace fear with LOVE, move unbelief into TRUST, and ACT in obedience. Rejoice at the Helper being there with you, instead of questioning what is. Begin to see the Word as the only truth. 1. Describe a past situation where you grieved over your own disobedience to God. 2. What is your biggest fear that causes frequent disobedience to happen? 3. Ask the Spirit to find you one or more Bible verse that will help overcome your fear.
Please read James 1:22-25 (MSG). The Anxious One It s Sabbath Sunday! You can t wait to arrive at church. The drive was a breeze and worship was fabulous. The message begins, and right away your pastor is speaking to you. Better yet, the Lord is speaking to you directly. He continues to after the service is over. He starts talking to you about your anxiety. You have been fighting this for years. God knows, you know, but not many other people know. God has been tugging on your heart to give more to Him and let more go. The struggle has been real. But you feel good because the church service made you feel free from your worries! The next day, everything went back to normal. The same stress you have been dealing with came back. You start to become anxious and worried again. You forgot what the Lord said to you yesterday. When He reminds you of it, it doesn t ease your anxiety as it did yesterday. He has to speak something new just to calm you down. And the cycle continues on and on. You ve lost all hope. You can t see yourself living without anxiety. Managing your anxiety is hard enough, and even that seems impossible nowadays. You believe in Jesus, but this anxiety has gotten a hold of you and you can t win the battle. Anxiety suffocates life. An overwhelming reality should not come against the truth of the Word. James says when we let God minister to us for a short time, it is not God s full message. We need to let the Word have its full effect. The cycle of partial listening needs to end. His full message says that He wants us to be free right now. In order to be free, we must act! Run full speed at God. Fight to get to Him. Work at seeking Him. Do not look at the Word that says be anxious for nothing, and two minutes later become anxious and worried. We must let go in obedience, and we do this by catching a glimpse of what the Word says about our problem and stick to it. Come against every distraction by fighting back. Enjoy the battle because the Word says to. Repeatedly affirm your actions in order to win. You can win! 1. Write down the deep wounds that you need to let go. 2. Can you win the battle to become free? If yes, why? 3. Write down 3 detailed responses you will use the next time your war starts.
Please read Luke 22:24-30 (NASB). The Comparer You re scrolling through Instagram on different women s accounts. One has their new book coming out, another has just released a sign up for their conference, and yet another is doing a business webinar making a killing of a profit. Sheesh. You go back to your own Instagram page. You start looking at your number of followers, the amount of people who viewed your latest blog post, and even how many people signed up for your email list. You feel a bit down, but you just remind yourself that God told you to do this. He will not let you down. Hours go by, and you start to do the same thing. This time, your reaction is different. You notice that you re putting in all this work, but no results are happening. Is it all really worth it? I mean, seriously. I m sacrificing, but there s no return! Do I keep going or just stop right here right now? Maybe the girls on Instagram are successful because they re greater. I feel like just copying what they re doing instead of doing what God told me to do. Anything that the Apostles did, we are bound to do. If they were fighting about who s the greatest, you can bet that we are too. But Jesus corrects this behavior. He confesses that some people live in the comparison trap, trying to rule over one another. Many would call those people greater because of their status at the table. But to Jesus, this status doesn t matter. And neither should it matter to us. The greatest out of all is the one who serves. Are you serving? Then you are the greatest, regardless of who else is serving besides you. Let s encourage each other while we are playing our roles, because we know that serving can be a lonely road by ourselves. 1. Ask the Spirit to convict you on areas of life where you are comparing. 2. Reach out to one person who is striving toward something similar as you to encourage them and share thoughts about the personal journey. 3. What do you need to fast from in order to gain control of your jealousy?
Please read Matthew 5:38-48 (NASB). The Bad Day You just had a really bad day. The lady at the grocery store was rude. Your manager was in a bad mood. You were so busy you didn't even get to eat lunch. You just want to relax, not talk to anyone and eat a lot of food. You go home and expect just that. But apparently no one else got the memo. Your father begins to annoy you right as you walk in the door. You ignore him because you don t want to be bothered. You go upstairs to take a shower. Afterwards, you come downstairs to cook something. Your father says something a second time. This time it was because you ignored him before. Well, you ignore him again and begin to cook all your food. Right as you sit down to eat, your father says Wow, shouldn t you be eating less? That s a whole lot of food on your plate. Without thinking, the next words that come out of your mouth are pretty harsh and insulting to your father. You re so fed up that you go upstairs with your plate of food and begin to cry. You begin to talk to God about your behavior and try to justify what you said. Well, what he said to me wasn t that nice either! I guess it s okay. You walk away from that conversation without praying for your father, even though the Lord told you to. You just didn t feel like it. This commandment is simple, yet hard to obey. The world says "get back at him" so it's easy to get away with misbehavior. You can complain to a few people about the situation, and they'd even be on your side. "Girl, he shouldn't have said that. You had a right to be mad." All of these reactions are worldly and wrong. Even though people mistreat us, we should not act unloving. We have received the ultimate grace through Jesus, and we need to extend it out to others. Those who don't know Jesus watch your every move to see if you follow what you proclaim. Some will even test your faith by pushing your buttons or limits. We must act accordingly in each situation to honor God. 1. Reflect on the verses provided. What really stood out to you from Jesus words? 2. What is one thing people do that makes you easily angered, like the story showed? 3. How can you apply Jesus words to the one thing that makes you easily angered?
Please read Song of Solomon 3:1-5 (NASB). Mrs. Chris You ve been in college for about a year now and you met this guy. You both met when you went out to a lounge for your friend s birthday. She invited other people you didn t know, and one of them happened to be Chris. Chris has been really persistent the past few months. You keep him around because he s fun to talk to, but you know God hasn t called you to have a boyfriend. You talk on the phone late at night and hang out alone together. Even other people start to ask if you re dating, but you shut the question down immediately. It was all harmless until Chris wants to have a talk. Chris calls and says he wants to become more than friends. At first, you shut that thought down too. But he brings it up again a week later. This time your no isn t as firm as it was before. You succeed at moving on to another topic before you really have to make a decision. After your conversation, you really begin to question your feelings for Chris. You start to believe you like him, and he s good for you. You ve known each other for a while and it s not like you ve rushed into anything. Although God said for you to not have a boyfriend, He might ve changed His mind since then. You think it s a good idea to date Chris, and you tell him yes. The bride in the Bible says something so profound to us as women. She tells us not to love until love pleases. The pleasing being talked about is not sexual, but spiritual. In fact, we do everything to please God. So we should not love until it pleases God. Mrs. Chris was aware of God s command to be single, and said no at first. But after weeks of arousing the idea of having a boyfriend and awakening thoughts of Chris, she said yes. This didn t please her either. God s way is the best way, and a relationship without God will soon end. She could be trying to fill a void in her heart that she has not let go. This will leave her feeling even more empty. She could be impatient and not practicing the fruit of the Spirit, which means her flesh will begin to rule over her. All of these endings do not bring glory to God and should be a caution sign for us in our own lives. 1. What is your personal reason for awakening love in your life? 2. What influences can trigger these thoughts, ideas, or desires to occur? 3. For 2 minutes, declare out loud God s promises for your love life and future family.
Please read Hebrews 12:5-11 (NKJV). The Diet Plan You know it s time to lose weight. You ve tried many diets before, but this time you re ready for a serious change. You don t even know where to start and haven t been to a gym in years. But God has been placing it on your heart for quite some time now and you want to act. You ve been back and forth, trying to plan and prepare, but you think it s best if you just act now. So you wake up on Monday morning to start working out. You made it through the whole thing and starting feeling good! Sore, but more energized. You have breakfast and lunch prepared to take to your job. When you come home, you plan to eat a nice, filling salad. Sounds like a plan! You do great throughout the day and come home for dinner. As you pull open the fridge, you see your salad and another item next to it. Looks like your roommate brought home some leftovers from a local restaurant. It s a delicious looking slice of pizza. You have a tough choice to make. To eat it or not? We all know how this story turns out too often. We go for the unhealthy dish and wind up regretting it later. We go for instant gratification because that s the world that we live in. We are no longer willing to sacrifice temporary pleasure for eternal gain. It does not come natural to us and we don t have enough power in ourselves to fight the temptation. Or do we? Whom the Lord loves, He will set straight. If you re a daughter of the King, you ll be corrected by the Father. The reason behind it is so that we are able to reach new levels of holiness. Holiness is discipline. Say no a lot. Sacrifice a lot. Fight more. Avoid more. After training yourself for a while, you will begin to produce fruit of righteousness. Your Spirit will overpower your flesh. It will become easier to be disciplined. You ll need patience, perseverance, and a no matter what mentality to last. 1. List all areas where you are not disciplined in your walk. 2. Pray over each area and ask God to open your heart so that He can do a work in it. 3. If you were a soldier in training, what would you change in your schedule currently?
Step 1 Choose one day out of the devotional to review completely. Answer the same questions and compare them to your previous answers. Change the questions of that day. Rewrite them as if you were interviewing an obedience expert in this area of life. Step 2 Step 3 Write what you think the obedience expert answers would be. They ve already mastered their skill and are giving others advice to do the same. Step 4 Picture yourself as that expert. Answer yes or no to this question: Can you see yourself achieving that level of obedience? Step 5 Ask the Spirit to minister to you. Ask for scriptures to build your confidence and ability to be the obedience expert.