When People Obey, God Moves

Memory verse: “Jesus replied, ‘if anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him’ “(John 14:23)

When you obey God, He will accomplish through you what He has purposed to do. When God does something through your life that only He can do, you will come to know Him more intimately. If you do not obey, you will miss some of the most excit­ing experiences of your life.

When God purposes to do something through you, the assignment will have God-sized dimensions. This is because God wants to reveal Himself to you and to those around you. If you can do the work in your own strength, people will not come to know God. However, if God works through you to do what only He can do, you and those around you will come to know Him.

The God-sized dimensions of an assignment from God create a crisis of belief. You must believe God is who He says He is and that He can and will do what He says He will do. When you obey Him, you must allow Him to do what He has said. He is the One who accomplishes the assignment, but He does it through you.

Old Testament Examples

Only in the act of obedience did Moses begin to experience the full nature of God. Moses could believe in God while living in the wilderness, but he began to dramatically experience God only when he went to Egypt as God had commanded. What he began to know about God grew from his obedience to God. In Moses’ life we can see this pattern of God speaking, Moses obeying, and God accomplishing what He purposed to do. When Noah obeyed, God preserved his family and repopulated the earth. When Abraham obeyed, God gave him a son and built a nation. When David obeyed, God made him a king. When Elijah obeyed, God sent down fire and consumed a sacrifice. Moses came to know God through experience as he obeyed Him. These people of faith came to know God by experience when they obeyed Him, and He accomplished His work through them.