(The only) Harvest Worth Gathering

Disclaimer; 

(Today is one of those

'much-easier-writ-than-run/said-than-done' posts)

The older I get the more evident this age-old Bible truth becomes;

Without faith it is impossible to please God.

Faith's foolproof  evidence is obedience💗

Faith without works is dead

Obedience opens the doors to the extra-ordinary life

every believer may experience.

God's invitation to 'come' is extended to everyone!

All are created by Him, 

and dearly loved by Him:

 nobody is a nobody

and His word is for everybody!!)

Hallelujah!

1 Sam.15:22

So Samuel said: 

“Has the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, 

As in obeying the voice of the LORD? 

Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, 

And to heed 

than the fat of rams.

Today's post was inspired in part by a few recent devotions in

My Utmost For His Highest by Oswald Chambers 

Oho, what want and woe we sow when we usurp God’s Word with vice

And disregard and oft forego the waiting that His way requires

But oh, what hope and joy and peace rains on altars of sacrifice

As we, with yielded will release the impetus of vain desires

How fraudulent, faith’s holy fight if we reserve the right to ‘I’

How fickle, the compass of sight and logic’s crafty rigmarole

The words we say do not portray the ‘yay’ of love’s utter reply

To trust in God and to obey is the love-language of the soul

For all the change that spills its art through progression’s scarred institute

The proneness of the human heart, no ‘enlightenment’ reinvents

The Tempter’s ‘did God really say’ when eying the forbidden fruit

Still presses us to disobey, blinding us to its consequence

Oh, what sad harvest we commence when we cultivate pious talk

Justifying glossed ignorance, without surrender to God’s way

Oh God, convict us of our sin, lest we become a stumbling block

Oh, work Your miracle within, and make us eager to obey

God’s everlasting Word is true; a light that never beams awry

A Beacon to guide pilgrims through a world that aggrandizes sin

Oho, what blessing we forego when Self is too stubborn to die

Only obedience can sow a harvest worth gathering in

© Janet Martin

To Obey is Better Than Sacrifice-Keith Green

 

Jer.17:5-10

This is what the Lord says:

“Cursed is the one who trusts in man,

who draws strength from mere flesh

and whose heart turns away from the Lord.

6 That person will be like a bush in the wastelands;

they will not see prosperity when it comes.

They will dwell in the parched places of the desert,

in a salt land where no one lives.

7 “But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,

whose confidence is in him.

8 They will be like a tree planted by the water

that sends out its roots by the stream.

It does not fear when heat comes;

its leaves are always green.

It has no worries in a year of drought

and never fails to bear fruit.”

9 The heart is deceitful above all things

and beyond cure.

Who can understand it?

10 “I the Lord search the heart

and examine the mind,

to reward each person according to their conduct,

according to what their deeds deserve.”