“How am I to know if I am obeying the Lord Jesus?” This is a question I have long had on my heart, and perhaps you, too, have wonrdered about it. Maybe an illustration will help us.
You and I can tell fairly well when we are doing things that are pleasing to our fathers and mothers, can’t we? Sometimes we can tell by the way they look at us. Other times, if we continue to displease them, they have to come to us and let us know they are not pleased, in some other way. And day by day, we learn to know our parents more and better. We learn to know what they like, and what they don’t like. And if we love them, we want to do just what they like.
So it is with the Lord Jesus, and the one who is saved by grace, and wants to please Him. We cannot see Him, but we have His Word, the Bible. And if we read much and often in our Bibles, and come to God in prayer in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and open our hearts and lives to Him, we will be able to discern whether or not we are pleasing and obeying Him when in communion.
We will never be free while down here, from failure, because our nature is sinful. But where our desire is toward Him, He will honor it. We should live as though He were right next to us, seeing and hearing everhing we do or say, our One Object being to please Him.
So you see, God guides us through His Word, by His Holy Spirit, Who is given to all who are saved.
Our Father greatly desires that we should be happy, but we must always remember that the happy child is the obedient one. The most unhappy person is the one who pleases himself. Our Lord’s joy was to please the Father. May this also be our joy the little while He leaves us down here!
“Lord, I humbly pray for
Submission to Thy Word:
In every holy precept
May Thy blest voice be heard.
Speak in living power
Thine every word to me,
Causing me to render
Obedience unto Thee.”
ML 06/24/1945