Hi, and welcome to Five Word Prayers Daily, a five-day-a-week daily devotional where we share the word, prayers, and our heart.

I'm Lisa Whittle, and I welcome you to just five minutes with me, which I trust and pray will be five minutes well spent.

We're talking all this week about the word obedience, and specifically how vital it is in the way we live our life as a follower of Jesus Christ.

So yesterday we did sort of an overview of Genesis 22 and talked about how Abraham didn't

step into that situation as a newbie, but rather obedience had become a prior lifestyle for him.

Today we're going to talk about something that has to get out of the way in order for obedience

to take place and how none of it has anything to do at all with our feelings. Stick around.

I'll be right back.

So we're in Genesis 22 again, and it says in that chapter in verse 3, the next morning

Abraham got up early, which says to me that God had told him this news, remember, about going

to sacrifice his son on the mountain, and then he had to sleep on that news all night.

Can you just imagine waking up with

this knowledge on your mind? Listen, friend, I was thinking about this. I wake up with a dental

appointment on the calendar, and I'm in a bad mood. But Abraham practiced something that is very

important, and here's what it is. Obedience is about

choice, not mood. Let me say that again. Obedience is about choice, not mood. Our lifestyle

of obedience will be a direct result of how much we set ourselves up for it. The truth is, we may never feel like obeying God.

So if we wait to feel like it, we will likely be waiting our whole life.

This is such a crazy simple example, but if I were to wait to feel like cooking dinner

for my family almost every night, they would likely never get fed. And that's something

not very hard, right? A lot of us sit around waiting for hours and days and even years on the

feelings to hit us, to have us wanting to obey and serve and honor God, and then we're surprised

...