Today’s journey hasn’t budged an inch from where it left off yesterday.  God has given me His Holy Spirit as my gift for accepting His Son Jesus as my personal Savior and Lord.  However, Jesus will never be Lord of my life if I do not listen and obey the voice of The Holy Spirit within me.  This was so clear this morning as I was reading the scripture part of my devotional time.  It was stating that the kingdom of Israel was divided upon the end of Solomon’s reign due to his lack of listening and obeying God’s voice/message.  Jeroboam became king of the northern kingdom.  He wasn’t following God’s leadership either so God sent a messenger to him from Judah.  Jeroboam wanted the messenger to stay for a meal and he said he couldn’t.  God had specifically instructed him to not eat or drink from this kingdom.  However, a different prophet came to him and told him he had heard from an angel of god that he should eat with him and so he did.  The original prophet who came to Jeroboam was then killed by a lion on his journey back home because of his disobedience to the message God had personally given him.  This was my wake up.  How many times have I had a message/focus from God and had it diminished or ruined because I listened to a lesser god?  The lesser god for me is often money.  God will nudge me and I will listen and rationalize what I think is comfortable.  God says to sacrifice joyfully to Him.  I give comfortably and will never know the blessings of genuine sacrificial giving when I disobey God’s original message.

This is only one example of my needing to learn not only how to hear God’s voice, but to then step into complete obedience of following the message to completion.  This sometimes takes Kathy and I doing it together–when it’s the message like the one above.  Regardless, God’s messages complete His Kingdom work.  I sure don’t want to stand in the way of my own personal involvement in this.  It makes me think of something that happened to my dad years ago.  He was grumbling to our pastor at the time about a focus the church had.  The pastor told him, “Harold, the work of the church being done is God’s kingdom work.  You can join it or you can turn your back on it.  God will see that it gets done whether you take part or not.  If you choose to not, you will be the one missing out on the blessings of obedience.  That is your choice.”  I remember my dad telling me this.  His response to the message was to quit grumbling and start obeying.  Today’s message for me is obedience to The Holy Spirit’s voice within me.