Obedience

And I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you shall heed My ordinances and do them. Ezekiel 36:27

A couple of days ago a person was telling me about obedience. The jest of the conversation was that we must be obedient to be saved and we must be obedient to receive the Holy Spirit. It was an awesome experience, because the Holy Spirit just gave me the perfect peace that it is not us who have the burden of obedience, it is our Father Who has it. Our Father is responsible for being obedient to His Word. Our Father has to be obedient in causing us to have life and have it abundantly. The burden is His, while the victory is ours. Our Father said that He would place His Spirit within us and that He would cause us to be obedient. The glorious Truth is that our Father is not reactive to us, we are reactive to Him. He leads us in every aspect of our lives. He is the power and ability that makes us victorious in everything. 

But God shows and clearly proves His [own] love for us by the fact that while we were still sinners, Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One) died for us. Romans 5:8

Christ did not and does not need us to first be obedient so that He can then act in our lives. If that were the case, we would all be doomed. Grace is a gift and where our sin abounds, His Grace much more abounds, Romans 5:20. No one can call on our Father for salvation without Him first empowering us to call on Him.

No one is able to come to Me unless the Father Who sent Me attracts and draws him and gives him the desire to come to Me, and [then] I will raise him up [from the dead] at the last day. John 6:44

A branch cannot be obedient to the vine, without the vine causing it to be. A body part cannot be obedient on its own without the head empowering it to be. A lump of clay cannot just become a bowl on its own without the potter first molding into a bowl. The victorious Truth for us is that we are the branches and Jesus is our Vine. We are the body parts and Jesus is our Head. We are the clay and our Father is the Potter.

I am the Vine; you are the branches. Whoever lives in Me and I in him bears much (abundant) fruit. However, apart from Me [cut off from vital union with Me] you can do nothing. John 15:5

Without Jesus causing us to be obedient we cannot be obedient.

John answered, A man can receive nothing [he can claim nothing, he can take unto himself nothing] except as it has been granted to him from heaven. [A man must be content to receive the gift which is given him from heaven; there is no other source.] John 3:27

We cannot be obedient unless our Father first causes us to be obedient. So when someone tells you what we have to first do, rejoice, because that burden is all on our Father and He is more then willing and able to cause us to be who and what He wants us to be.

For His divine power has bestowed upon us all things that [are requisite and suited] to life and godliness, through the [full, personal] knowledge of Him Who called us by and to His own glory and excellence (virtue). 2 Peter 1:3