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Obedience is the Key to all Doors

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God Does Extraordinary Things Through Ordinary People

As I write this, Christmas is just a few days away. I love Christmas! It’s a wonderful time of the year. A time when people’s niceness seems to bubble to the surface more than any other.

The anticipation and surprises when opening presents is one of my favorite parts. I’ve had the whole “proper” present opening discussion many times with a variety of people. I don’t want to know what it is, until I open it. Some people I know, who will remain nameless, have been known to go buy presents for themselves, wrap them, put them under the tree and then open them on Christmas morning.

Enjoy whichever method works best for you.

Prior to the first Christmas, Mary was visited by Gabriel and made aware of the gift she would be given to share with the world. You want to talk about a big surprise. This was the biggest one ever. Even though she didn’t know how or why she was chosen…she accepted it and was obedient.  

At the time when God chose Mary to receive this amazing gift, she was no one special. She wasn’t rich or famous, she was just an ordinary young girl that accepted God’s gift and was obedient with it.

Obedience is what God wants from us.

C.S. Lewis wrote, “Obedience is the key that opens every door.” God does extraordinary things through ordinary people. The Scripture is full of ordinary people called by God to do something special for him. These people are just like you and me, just common, ordinary people.


“Moses was living on the back side of the desert, a total failure as the prince of Egypt, and God called him to deliver a nation.
 
When Goliath was taunting the Israelites, everyone discounted David, a teenage shepherd boy. But God didn’t! And David defeated the giant and became the king of a nation.
 
How about Nehemiah? He was living in Persia in complete obscurity serving as a cupbearer and God called him to rebuild the walls around Jerusalem.
 
Mary was a teenage girl living in Nazareth when God called her to be the mother of the Messiah.
 
And Simon Peter would have lived and died an ordinary fisherman except that Jesus called him to establish the church.
 
Do you see the pattern here? God uses ordinary people to do extraordinary things. He uses improbable men and women who have nothing of their own to offer, but their faithfulness and willingness to say, “Yes.”   

Dr. Jack Graham, November 14, 2016

God has called you to do something wonderful and extraordinary.

Use your key of obedience to unlock your doors to extraordinary!

There’s Something Better Out There for Each of Us

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Figuring Out What It Is, Is the Hard Part

 

There were a couple of boys selling candy bars to raise money for a school project. When they asked a man walking by if he would like to by one, he agreed to, on one condition…the boys had to eat it. The kind gesture on the part of the man backfired when one of the boys refused to eat his half. He said, “I can’t take candy from a stranger.”

 

 


His obedience to the rule was without understanding the underlying meaning.

 


In this week’s Scripture, Luke 13:10-17, Jesus heals a woman on the Sabbath. This causes a church leader to become angry. The rule was, no work on the Sabbath. Jesus points out that, if it’s okay to water their animals on the Sabbath then surely, it’s okay to heal this woman.


We often get hung up on rules without looking beyond the surface and going deeper. One of the Ten Commandments is, to keep the Sabbath holy, Exodus 20:8-11. What is the reason for not working on the Sabbath? God made everything in six days. If he can do that and then rest a day, we should be able to do our work in the same amount of time.

 


What about those whose jobs require the work be seven days each week, i.e. medical, power and utilities, emergency workers, etc. The important thing is to rest and honor God…which ever day of the week that happens to be. Most of us are working more than we should and it’s no one’s fault but our own. We need to dig down on this question and find the balance of work and rest.


This doesn’t mean that rules aren’t important and that we shouldn’t follow them, because they are. We need to be careful to not get hung up on each little rule or cultural trend and miss the big picture. Our busy lives cause us to take things at face value. It’s quicker and easier to follow the crowd and just believe what we’re being told. It’s important to dig deep and find the underlying foundation.


There’s something better out there and it’s up to us to find it.


Some people visiting an orphanage in Botswana witnessed a young girl who wasn’t joining in the activities with the rest of the children. Then they noticed crutches lying on the ground beside her. After some research they found out that she was unable to walk from birth, but with the use of the crutches and therapy she was improving. As the group was going inside, she fell, the people started to go help her up, but the leaders of the orphanage stopped them. They said that God has something better in store for every child and her getting up on her own made her stronger.


 

 

God has something better in store for each of us…we just have to get up when we fall down.

 


We need to be careful to not get tripped up by the rules without knowing the underlying meaning and if we do, get back up and go again. The more we do the stronger we become.