Simple Obedience
It is the Year of Aggressive Expansion. We have been contending for more of His presence and power. We have been declaring that aggressive expansion would start in our lives. That His presence would expand in us first and that it would overflow into everything else. The word of the year is rooted in Matt 11:12:
From the time of John the Baptizer until now, the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful (zealous) people have been seizing it (as a precious prize). Matthew 11:12
Do not neglect the sample obediences.
God operates through our simple obediences
Pick up your mat
Come, and follow me
Do you want to be healed? Yes. (power of our yes)
God uses simple obediences to bring about transformation
To illustrate this today, I want to take us to the story of Naaman in 2 Kings 5:
Naaman’s breakthrough was found in simple obedience. Go wash yourself in the Jordan 7x and you will be healed. Nothing extravagant, nothing incredibly difficult. It was a simple obedience that could be completed in a day, but Naaman struggled following through with the simple obedience. Think about that: the simple obedience was one that would set him free from a long time of suffering.
We may judge Naaman for his stubbornness, but we are often the same. God calls us to simple obediences daily.
Connect with me daily in the secret place (Psalm 91:1)
He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty
Read my word daily (John 15:7)
If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you
Pray about everything (Phil 4:6)
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication present your requests to God
Don’t forsake the assembly (Heb 10:25)
Not neglecting to meet together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near
Love your neighbor (Mark 12:31)
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength, and to love one’s neighbor as yourself is much more than burnt offerings and sacrifices
Serve one another (Gal 5:13)
…but through love serve one another
Yet the first two most christians neglect daily. Then we wonder why His presence does not expand aggressively in our lives, yet alone our nation!
If we want to be carriers of His presence, people who carry His power wherever we go, if we want aggressive expansion to begin with us, we must be people who can steward the simple obediences!
10 “One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. Luke 16:10
3 Things that keep us from simple obedience:
1.Not Owning Your Faith
2 Now bands of raiders from Aram had gone out and had taken captive a young girl from Israel, and she served Naaman’s wife. 3 She said to her mistress, “If only my master would see the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.” 4 Naaman went to his master and told him what the girl from Israel had said.
It was the little girl’s faith that led Naaman to the man of God
He did not know God or have experience with God for Himself
God will use another’s faith to point you to Him, but that will only take you so far. It has to become your own faith.
How to counteract this?
Connect with God daily in the Secret Place (if you are not doing this daily, your faith is not your own, it belongs to someone else)
Set apart a time and place to meet with God and be expectant to meet with God!
This is why we invest so much in EGK & EGY
Their faith must become their own
2. Unmet expectations
11 But Naaman went away angry and said, “I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy.
Expecting God to do things the way you want to do them
Naaman expected his healing to come another way
This unmet expectation almost kept him from receiving his healing
Getting to a river was not what he expected nor what he thought
How to counteract this?
Submit to what the Lord has asked of you
It may make no sense to do what He is calling you to do, but submit
Submit to godly leadership
Get accountability (it were the people close to him that were able to say don’t despise this obedience! It’s not a hard disobedience, a simple one! Do it!)
Remain teachable and correctable
3. Pride
12 Are not Abana and Pharpar, (fa-par) the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Couldn’t I wash in them and be cleansed?” So he turned and went off in a rage 13 Naaman’s servants went to him and said, “My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, ‘Wash and be cleansed’!”
Unwilling to go low and humble yourself
Think yourself above what God is asking of you
Worried about what people will think of you
How to counteract this?
Grow in the Fear of the Lord
Fear God over Man
Don’t worry about what man will think of you if you go low
Be willing to go as low as possible
Sometimes a simple obedience feels like you’re going to take a step back, but there is purpose in it.
7 Now he told a parable to those who were invited, when he noticed how they chose the places of honor, saying to them, 8 “When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest someone more distinguished than you be invited by him, 9 and he who invited you both will come and say to you, ‘Give your place to this person,’ and then you will begin with shame to take the lowest place. 10 But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when your host comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you. 11 For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” Luke 14:7-11
There is breakthrough on the other side of your simple obedience (breakthrough occurs after a series of simple obediences).
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