“Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession.” Exodus 19:5

Let us strive to be God’s treasured possession.

How do we do that?

–       By repenting of our sins and forgiving

–       By being obedient to God

–       By doing His Holy Will

–       By giving our lives to Him so that He can fulfill His plans through us

Giving glory to God requires that we strive to do God’s will here on earth as it is in heaven.  We must praise God; we must thank God; we must serve God; we must keep learning from Him and allow Him to use us as His instruments of love, peace and justice.

Obedience is impossible for the Christian who is not truly and totally enamored with Jesus Christ.  But for the soul truly in love with Jesus then obedience is a natural outcome of an intimate communion with Our Lord, sealed by the Holy Spirit, fulfilled through continuous acts of kindness, mercy and compassion.

For a soul not truly in love with Jesus, obedience may look like a life of hardship, a life forgoing pleasure and that’s what Satan wants you to believe!  The truth is that obedience to Jesus is a safe, enlightened, peaceful path where we live in absolute confidence that our lives are pleasing to God and that we are each day moving closer and closer to our privileged end-state, eternity with Our Lord Jesus.

Perhaps one of the greatest mysteries in life is that the “selfless” are fulfilled but the “selfish” are NEVER satisfied.  Think about it.  Is the man who builds up his wealth and accumulates property and riches ever truly satisfied with those possessions or does he always want more?  Consider now the selfless man who forgets himself and is always focused on loving and giving God glory.  The selfless man is fulfilled by the peace that God gives him.  He knows that he is doing God’s will, embracing a life of holy purpose and meaning, a life that is worthy of the eternal promises of God.

Obedience is not a life of toil and misery; obedience to God it is the outpouring of love by the people of God who exist to give Him glory.  Disobedience to God is too often the outcome of ignorance, selfishness and carelessness.  When we fall in love, we are full of desire to be with the one we love.  We want to spend time with them.  We want to make them happy.  We want to spend our lives together.  And so it is with souls that fall in love with Jesus.  Our intimate communion with Jesus is a life that fulfills the holy desire we have in our hearts to honour Him.  We want to be with Jesus in all things and embrace only those activities that will please Him.  We want to make Jesus happy and that’s what giving God glory is all about – making Jesus smile!  Once we recognize how much Jesus loves us, we fall in love.  We invite Jesus into our lives; we trust Him and we allow Him to guide us and work through us daily as we fulfill His holy will.

The Holy Spirit accomplishes its purposes if we surrender our will to the holy will of God.  Jesus will live in our hearts and transform our lives if we open the door to our heart’s even ever so slightly to allow Him to enter.  Fall in love with Jesus by meditating on His Passion.  Take the Walk to Calvary and discover His great love for you.

Jesus says, in Matthew 16:25 “For whosoever would save his life shall lose it: and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall find it.”  When we surrender our life to Jesus, we find our life’s true meaning and we discover our true identity—we are disciples of Jesus, instruments of His holy will.  God has no eyes and arms and feet on earth except for ours.  It’s up to us to see with the compassion of Jesus; it’s up to us to use our lives to make a difference to help one another.  Selfish lives are lives that are devoid of true meaning and therefore the “selfish” can never be fulfilled, but lives given freely to God for His glory are lives that are fulfilled in the knowledge that we are in full communion with Our Lord whose love is infinite and everlasting.

“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.” Colossians 3: 23-24