Thank you for your very good words today:I could not agree with you more. If we are all simply serving the Lord out of fear, what kind of relationship is that? Are we only buying "fire insurance"? Or are we motivated to serve the Lord out of love and obedience?I did not learn until recently that the Hebrew word for obedience is the same word for hearing. Check it out in your Strong's the Hebrew word # 8085, shama, is both to hear and to obey. So to hear the voice of the Lord is to obey the voice of the Lord. Maybe the problem with some believers is they have not yet learned how to hear the voice of the Lord, in order that they may obey the voice of the Lord.There is an excellent article on Hearing God's Voice at the following URL:I will quote a few paragraphs from this article, by Dr. Stephen Jones:God does not hate those He disciplines; He disciplines because He loves His children and intends to refine them as gold and silver to replace their dross with the divine nature. He intends to bring forth a people in His image, that they might rule and reign with Him, and that they might in turn teach others how to die, following Jesus to the Cross.
In bringing up children properly, the world tends to believe that discipline is harmful to a child’s development. Some parents even refuse to discipline their children on the grounds that they want their children to love them. They do not realize that discipline is not the problem, so long as it is done without abuse. Both discipline and abuse must be defined by Scripture. This is outside the scope of our present study, of course, but we do want to make the point that children who love their parents most are those who were properly disciplined by them in their early life.
It is the same in our relationship with our heavenly Father. Though God’s disciplines can often be quite severe, making us want to run away from Him, we will love Him in the end, for He disciplines us to bring us into maturity, capable of knowing His own agape love. The greatest commandment, Jesus said, is found in Deut. 6:4 and 5.
4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord; 5 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.
So often we focus so much on the part that commands us to love Him that we forget how this is done. The key is in the first phrase: “Hear, O Israel.” Hearing Him is the first step toward loving Him. First we hear, and this produces faith. Second, that faith is tested by fire, so that the faith is pure and depends upon no human flesh or understanding. This testing produces patience, or endurance. Only then do we receive the promises. Heb. 6 tells us,
12 That ye be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises. 13 For when God made promise to Abraham, because He could swear by no greater, He sware by Himself, 14 saying, Surely, blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee. 15 And so, after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise.