We Must Be Obedient

I've been slowly reading F.B.Meyer's book Elijah.  The following paragraphs really stood out to me and I wonder how much I miss of what God has for me because I am not quick and sensitive to obey small promptings.  I have made it a practice to obey what I know in the Word of God but even there I know of areas where I have not brought my practice up to the level of what I know.  The life of blessedness held out as a result of living in obedience is very attractive to me. I highly recommend F.B.Meyer's biblical biographies  including this one -- they are full of insights.

"We have already insisted on this, but it is so indispensable that repeated emphasis must be laid upon it.  Christ reiterated His appeals for the keeping of his commands in almost every sentence of His closing discourses with His disciples (John 14:15, 21, 23, 24).  He gives the secret of His own abiding in His Father's love in these striking words:  "As the Father gave Me commandment, even so I do.  If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in My love, even as I kept My Father's commandments, and abide in His love."  (John 14:31, 15:10).  Instant and implicit obedience to the teaching of the Word, and to the inner promptings of the Holy Spirit, in an absolute condition of keeping, or increasing, the store of sacred influence.  On the contrary, one little item of disobedience persisted in is quite sufficient to check all further bestowments, and even to deprive us of what we have.  "If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land; but if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword."  Nor is such obedience hard; for all God's commands are enablings, and His grace is sufficient.  Look out for it.  If only every believer who reads these lines would resolve from this hour to imitate Elijah, who went and with the thought of merit, but beneath the inspiration of love;  not in the weightier matters only, but in the crossins of the t's and in the dottings of the i's --he would find at once that there would open before him a life of almost inconceivable glory.  It is the wide and open sea of blessedness.  The exact obedience of Elijah is the inviolable condition of receiving and keeping "the spirit and power of Elijah."