As we continue our week on abiding in the true vine of God, today we'll explore obedience

and how it relates to abiding in God. Take a moment even now to open your heart to trust God afresh.

He will always be for us and know what is best for us in every part of life.

He's so good, he's so kind, and he simply wants to walk with us. Welcome to the First 15 podcast.

The concept of obedience has become shrouded with a connotation of negativity. When we think of

obedience, we normally infer a feeling of doing a task apart from a desire or longing. We associate

obedience with obligation rather than fulfillment. But when Jesus walked on the earth, he carried

out a very different lifestyle of obedience.

Jesus' life demonstrates what obedience to our Heavenly Father is meant to look like.

Obedience to God is choosing to live a lifestyle of love and devotion to our God, who has loved us completely.

Jesus says in John 15, 9, and 10, as the Father has loved me, so I have

loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have

kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love. Too often we miss the heart of God when he calls us to obedience. Jesus illustrates

here that he lived his life reciprocating the love he was shown by his father. He lived his life

and obedience to God out of the wealth of relationship he had, not out of obligation. And Jesus

simply asks us to do the same.

He invites us into the process of receiving and giving love as the foundation of our life,

that we might abide in the depth of a relationship with our Heavenly Father as he did.

In Luke 1027, Jesus states the greatest commandments.

You should love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul,

and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.

How incredible is the heart of our God that he doesn't call us to a lifestyle of obligation

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