OBEIDENCE NOT ACCOMPLISHMENTS

What is required is serious obedience—doing what my Father wills. I can see it now—at the Final Judgment thousands strutting up to me and saying, 'Master, we preached the Message, we bashed the demons, our God-sponsored projects had everyone talking.' And do you know what I am going to say? 'You missed the boat. All you did was use me to make yourselves important. You don't impress me one bit. You're out of here'" (Matthew 7:21-23, The Message). 

Here we see a picture of some people brandishing their achievements before the Lord. They were shocked to find that the Lord was not impressed at all. We learn a big lesson here, that in God your obedience is more important than your achievements. Whereas the world celebrates people for their achievements, God celebrates and honours His saints for their obedience to His commands. Achievement is good and necessary, but it should never be at the expense of obedience to God’s commands. When your obedience rating is poor before the Lord, of what use is a high approval rating among men? 

The world measures you by what you accomplish, nobody cares about your obedience to God. But you have got to care about your obedience to the Lord because that will determine how God blesses you, and, in the final analysis, where you end up in eternity. Nobody will be admitted into heaven because of his worldly achievements because heaven is not like our hall of fame. Heaven is a reserved destination only for those who have obeyed God. 

One can only imagine the kind of accolades king Saul must have received for his military prowess. He had gone to battle against the Amalekites and captured their king, Agag alive. That by all means was (and still is) an important military accomplishment because no king ever wants to endure the humiliation of being captured alive. And when you consider the fact that much spoils in livestock were also recovered from the battle, you can be sure that king Saul's approval ratings among the people must have soared. But while all the praise singing was going on, God was not pleased that Saul had disobeyed His command to destroy Amalek. 

And so we discover from this story that sometimes, what we have rated and recorded as great achievement for man may in fact be the height of disobedience to God. The military boys must have been busy celebrating the bravery of their king. Meanwhile, Samuel was busy weeping for him because the Lord was angry with him for the very reason for which the world was happy with him. What an irony, a type of irony that continues to play itself out in the affairs of men all through the ages. 

One of the greatest disasters that can befall us as Christians is to be praised by the world for the very same thing that God is bringing us to judgement. When this is happening and we are not sensitive enough to spot the danger, we are digging our own spiritual graves. Hear it again: your achievements don't resonate with God, they don't impress Him at all. What thrills Him is your obedience - serious obedience.