Supernatural Transformation: Change Your Heart Into God’s Heart (24 page)

Although Jesus surrendered His will to God daily, His greatest test came when He had to submit to the cruel mockery and torture of death on the cross. Surrendering to this ordeal was a struggle for Him. However, after much prayer, He was able to say with conviction,
“Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me;
nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done
”
(Luke 22:42).

Gethsemane was where Christ fought as a Man to obey the Father. It is likely that every evil principality and stronghold expected to see Jesus fail. The devil and his demons had not been able to make Jesus fall by tempting Him with fame, wealth, immorality, pride, or riches to deny the will of God. But this time He faced physical and spiritual torture and agonizing death. Gethsemane was Christ’s personal “Armageddon”—His last battle. The conflict that took place in His heart was so intense that
“His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground”
(Luke 22:44). Medically speaking, His capillaries burst. His heart was broken that night.

Yet Jesus was a Man who lived under God’s authority. We don’t know how long He prayed, but when His prayers were complete, He was surrendered and ready to do God’s will, to finish the work for which He had come to earth.
“And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross”
(Philippians 2:8).

You are committed to obey God to the extent that you are submitted to Him.

Do you feel as if you are facing your own Gethsemane? Learning obedience is a process. It was the same for Jesus, even though He was sinless. We are not born obedient, and obedience is not a gift that can be imparted to us. As we go through this process of learning obedience, we will make mistakes, and we may have times when we disobey, because our will is difficult to break. However, that fact should not discourage us. Even though learning to obey takes time, obedience is not impossible, because the grace of the Holy Spirit will enable us to obey. Each time we surrender our own will to carry out the will of God, we are led to greater levels of obedience, which, in turn, give us access to greater spiritual rewards.

When we are at the beginning of this process, God will ask us to obey Him in small and perhaps seemingly insignificant matters. If we are faithful, He will give us increasingly challenging matters in which to submit to Him. I believe that’s how it was with Jesus. He learned obedience from the simplest of things to the hardest—which was to surrender Himself to God the Father as the sacrificial Lamb. It is interesting to note that Christ “died” to His will many times before His physical death on the cross. He obeyed the Father in every stage of His life and endured the suffering that all human beings experience on earth. (See, for example, Hebrews 2:18.) He did this in order to learn obedience and to fully identify with the human race. Jesus had to go through the process of learning obedience in which He continually
chose
to submit to the Father’s plan. That is why Christ can say to us,
“If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me”
(Matthew 16:24).

When Jesus died after surrendering His own will to the Father’s will, the veil of the temple was torn in two, signifying the restoration of the relationship between God and man. Then, God resurrected Jesus! Christ understood the principle that resurrection—literal and figurative—is the result of death to “self” and obedience to God. He had previously said to Pilate,
“
My Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it again.
No one takes it
from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This command I have received from My Father”
(John 10:17–18). The Son of God was obedient unto death on the cross because, again, He had placed Himself under God’s authority. And His obedience made Him fitting for resurrection.

None of us can crucify the sinful nature until we surrender our will to God. Ask the Holy Spirit to give you His supernatural grace, so you can learn to daily surrender your will to the Father’s, just as Christ did.

God the Father raised Jesus from dead because He died under God’s authority.

Obedience to God’s Authority

We must make a choice to obey God and His delegated authorities. If we aren’t in submission to the godly authority God has placed over our life, we are in a state of rebellion. We obey our leaders in the church, for the Word says,
“
Obey those who rule over you, and be submissive, for they watch out for your souls, as those who must give account. Let them do so with joy and not with grief, for that would be unprofitable for you
”
(Hebrews 13:17). We obey the delegated authorities at our places of work, because the Scriptures say,
“
Be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in sincerity of heart, as to Christ
”
(Ephesians 6:5). We obey the authorities in our homes, because we are commanded, “‘Honor your father and mother,’ which is the first commandment with promise
”
(Ephesians 6:2). We obey the laws and leaders of our governments, for God’s Word says,
“
Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God
”
(Romans 13:1). When we obey the earthly authorities delegated by God, we obey Him, and when we disobey them, we disobey God.

Obedience to God includes voluntary submission to His
delegated authorities.

The “How,” “When,” and “Where” of Obedience

As we noted earlier, obedience is linked to faith. It is not a feeling or an emotion but the result of an internal conviction that originates in the heart.
“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”
(Hebrews 11:1). To walk by faith is to have a strong conviction about the reality of the sovereign God and His invisible spiritual realm. When we obey God, our conviction is manifested in the natural realm as He works in our life in supernatural ways.

To have a heart of true and total obedience means to do what God commands—how, when, and where He says to. Such an obedient heart reflects great faith. Sometimes, we may agree with God about the things He commands but still fail to obey Him in the “how” and “when” of them, so that we end up obeying Him only partially in regard to the “where.” This is what happened to King Saul when he did not wait for Samuel to come and offer a sacrifice to the Lord but offered it himself, which he was not authorized to do. (See 1 Samuel 13:1–13.) Another time, Saul obeyed the “where” and “when” but not the “how.” God had told him to destroy the Amalekites and all their goods, including the animals. Although Saul
“attacked the Amalekites”
and put the people to death (see 1 Samuel 15:7–8), he and his army
“spared Agag
[the king]
and the best of the sheep, the oxen, the fatlings, the lambs, and all that was good, and were unwilling to utterly destroy them”
(1 Samuel 15:9). Because Saul’s heart was disobedient to God, the Lord rejected him as king. (See 1 Samuel 13:14; 15:10–11, 22–23.)

The prophet Samuel told Saul,
“Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice”
(1 Samuel 15:22). We need to take these words to heart, because a similar scenario occurs in the church today. Some people obey God and His delegated authorities only partially, and this has given the enemy a right to attack them. The Bible clearly says,
“Do not give the devil a foothold”
(Ephesians 4:27 niv). We know that Christ conquered Satan at the cross and stripped the enemy of his power and authority; the devil has been defeated, dethroned, and disarmed. If they know this, why are so many believers defeated, sick, poor, depressed, and anxious? Sometimes, the cause is disobedience—full or partial—which has given the enemy an entry, or
“foothold,”
into their lives.

Partial obedience is equivalent to disobedience.

Because Christ defeated Satan, giving us the victory over him, the only way the enemy can have a legal right to exercise power over us is through our disobedience. If this situation applies to you, today is the day to take away his rights and to reclaim your victory in Christ! Repent, ask God to forgive you, close every door of disobedience, and rebuke the enemy from attacking your health, your home, your finances, or any other area of your life. Paul wrote to the Romans,
“For your obedience has become known to all. Therefore I am glad on your behalf; but I want you to be wise in what is good, and simple concerning evil. And the God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly”
(Romans 16:19–20).

Our disobedience to God empowers Satan, while our obedience disarms him.

Taylor is a college student who returned to God after experiencing the consequences of falling into a life of rebellion and disobedience. He writes, “I was raised in the church, but I slowly turned my back on God as I grew older. I experienced depression and anger, even though I never mentioned it to anyone. One night, after returning to my room at the university, I contemplated taking my own life. I was about to do it when ‘something’ led me to reach out to a Christian friend. I went to her room, where she prayed for me and invited me to a meeting at the campus. This was not the first time she had invited me. Previously, I had always given her an excuse not to go, but this time I went.

“In the meeting, I was prayed over and ministered to. Then I was invited to an inner healing and deliverance service at the church. I was skeptical because I had never seen anything like it, and I wasn’t sure that it would really work. However, when I began to understand what it was all about, I cried uncontrollably, and I surrendered my heart to the Lord. At that moment, eighteen years of burdens and oppression lifted off my shoulders. When the pastor gave the altar call, I ran to it. I felt that God had been calling me for years to return to Him, but I had ignored Him all of that time.

“After giving my life to Christ, I felt free and filled with a peace I had not experienced before. I used to lead a life of immorality, depression, anger, bitterness, and fear, but I was set free from all that by the power of God. He began to transform me in order to make me the person He had planned for me to be. Now I allow God to do things His way through me and to use me to bring others closer to Him.”

Barriers to Obedience

All of us have various spiritual, mental, and emotional barriers that keep us from giving total obedience to God. We overcome these hindrances as we go through the process of learning full obedience. The most important aspect of this process is to continue surrendering to God and depending on His grace to accomplish the transformation of our heart. Let’s examine several of the barriers to obedience, at the same time assessing our own heart in relation to them.

1. Comfort and Convenience

Thousands of believers have allowed comfort and convenience to become their “god,” keeping them from obeying the Lord and making personal sacrifices on His behalf. If they were to lose their comforts and conveniences, many people would quickly demonstrate how weak their love, patience, kindness, perseverance, and surrender to God really are. In most cases, the financial and material blessings they enjoy originally came to them as blessings from God, but they hold on to them tightly and don’t use them for the purpose of blessing others in addition to benefitting themselves. Or, they are focused on the pleasure they derive from these gifts rather than focusing on the Giver Himself.

I know of families whom God has instructed to attend our church, but they won’t come because they consider the church too far away from where they live. They prefer to attend a church that is closer because it is more comfortable and convenient for them to do so—even at the price of spiritual stagnancy and disobedience.

Are you willing to obey God even if it means giving up some comfort and convenience?

2. “Profitability”

In regard to doing God’s will, some believers ask, “What’s in it for me?” They may know that God wants them to do something in particular, but since it would not be financially profitable, they are unwilling to obey. It is sad to find Christians who choose not to obey God unless they receive some material reward for their efforts. Some people obey only when they are offered a better position, more money, or something else they believe is to their advantage.

As I travel around the world to preach the gospel of the kingdom, there are some places where I am given financial support for coming and ministering to the people. There are other places where I am not given anything for ministering; the people either can’t give or won’t give, so our ministry has to cover the expenses of the mission. Yet my criterion for deciding whether to go to a country to manifest the supernatural power of God is not based on the promise of an offering or of reimbursement for travel expenses. My criterion is God’s will. If He wants me to go, nothing can stop me, because I have learned to obey Him, regardless of whether it is financially profitable or not.

Are you willing to obey God even when it doesn’t seem “profitable” to do so?