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Obedience

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Obedience
By Grant R. Nieddu & The Holy Spirit

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Dedicated to
The Holy Spirit, who has and continues to teach me obedience and reveal to me its immense value.

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Table of Contents
A Warm Welcome for Obedience Washout Listening Elis Disobedience Uh, Quiet Please Obedience In The Little Things Fear of the Face of Man Grace to Be Obedient How to Be Obedient Carefulness Joy: The Fruit of Obedience Obedience and Faith Do You Know Who You Are?

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A Warm Welcome for Obedience

Obedience is viewed as largely irrelevant today. Americanism often teaches individualism on par with patriotism. Along with that, one of the very few negative effects of the Grace Message going through the church is that we (Christians) do not have to do anything. It is as if they are teaching that God is not asking anything from a believer. The result is that we have an entire nation of people who resist submitting one to another. How much harder is it for us to be obedient!

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We all have opinions. And our opinion is that our opinion should be heard. We speak down to our elders, and talk back to those ahead of us. The move toward opinionated individualism has caused a nasty side-effect for American Christians: being obedient has largely become distasteful and (gasp!) unattractive. It is a sign of weakness and therefore should be overlooked as a valid position for anyone. That being the case, when we read references in the Bible to obedience, we tend to not like that. We breeze over it. We justify it away. Worse: we forget how to be obedient. We forget what God means by it. We, in effect, render it irrelevant. I believe that not understanding obedience (and therefore not living it!) has caused many ministers to over work. I believe that is has created many sects of inactivity among Christians. Worse, I believe that it has caused a difficult chasm between us and God that almost looks like we are demanding that He cross the chasm and come to us! (Which, as we know, he already did once; He will not be crucified again! Believe me!)
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Lack of understanding obedience affects more than the unsaved. The worst part about this is that many ministers of the gospel are just as opinionated and individualistic and driven. This is their great downfall in that very few of them actually take time to hear God (the first step to being obedient.) The busyness of the ministry, the results they think they need, takes a front seat. Gods voice takes a back seat. That being said, there IS resurgence in the Body toward obedience. Many groups of individuals are putting their agendas and egos aside and truly asking the Lord to teach them to be obedient. They are seeking what He wants and nothing more. This book is for those servants of God, and anyone interested in following their path. How can one be obedient? What are the elements surrounding obedience? Where does faith play into it? I have humbly tried to answer these questions in this book.

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Primarily, this was a book by God. Each of the sections I received in prayer. Most all of the scriptures were obtained the same way. That means that not only is it a book about obedience, it was written as a lesson to me on being obedient (hearing, heeding, and carefully observing) to what God was saying to me. I hope it fits you and speaks to you where you are at. Just know that if it doesnt, that is ok, too! Why? Because this books wasnt written for you. Shoot, it wasnt even written for me! It was written out of obedience. So, in the end, it was written for God.

God bless, and if I can ever be a blessing to you, I remain

Humbly Yours, Grant R. Nieddu +1.561.247.2686 Grant.nieddu@gmail.com

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P.O. Box 2115 Lakeland, FL 33806-2115

NOTE: You can obtain any of the chapters in this book for free on my website, www.GrantNieddu.com.

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Washout
What is washout? Well, have you ever seen a pastor totally forget where he was in the middle of his sermon, pause for what seemed like an uncomfortable eternity, ask his deacon to take over, walk out the back door and never come back? I have. That is washout. In youth ministry, I was told all the time that if I made it more than 2 years that I would have beaten the national average. Apparently, the average time a person serves as a youth pastor was only 2 years. (That numbers are not verified, and I dont think I agreed with them at the time either. I despise being pigeonholed!) But I DID see washout happen quite a bit. A fellow-youth pastor, single for years, one day simply disappeared from his ministry. He turned
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up in Louisiana almost 2 years later with a wife and 2 kids. He was cool, but you could sense something was off, just a bit. How do so many ministers become so burned out so fast? Didnt God say that the joy of the Lord is our strength? Didnt He say that He would never leave us or forsake us? What happened to the fact that it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives within me? Wouldnt that mean that He would keep us from burning out? In the pursuit of questions like these and more, I did come to one particular conclusion: either A) the Bible is wrong and God is a liar, or B) there is something wrong with me. What do you think is the obvious answer to that question? There is definitely something wrong with me. It may be in my theology. It may be that I am doing something wrong. But the problem is moi. In pursuit of a solution to this, I felt impressed in my spirit that it was an obedience issue.
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WHAT?! I exclaimed internally. God, how could that be?! Ministers are doing so much for you. They are being so diligent in bringing new people into church. They are praying and fasting. They are preaching 4 nights a week. They are attending house calls, prayer meetings, and networking with area pastors. They are financing the church, managing the staff, planning the sermons and sprinkling holy water on anything that moves! That is not what I have asked of them, was all the answer I got. What do You mean? They are sacrificing so much! and that is where I suddenly stopped myself. I knew immediately that was the problem. But He still reminded me of that fateful scripture. I want obedience MORE than sacrifice. I knew in my heart of hearts that even though ministers are running to and fro performing for the Lord, they are usually too busy to
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actually HEAR from the Lord what it is that He wants them to do. For certain this is what I fell victim to. I was all too familiar with doing 27 hours worth of work in a 24 hour day for the ministry to go home and feel exhausted. And it wasnt just being exhausted. It was drained without joy. Enter the washout. Our strength is gone. Our delight in doing the tasks is gone. The truth is that in the midst of our work we became task-oriented and not God-oriented. When we are doing what God has asked of us, it may be difficult. We may be asked to put our tasks to the side and simply fellowship with Him. We may be asked to work until our fingers bleed and our eyes bug out, but at the end of the day there is a joy in obedience. There is a satisfaction and a knowing that we were doing the right things. Though trials and tribulations may come, when we know that we know that we know that we are being obedient to something specifically that He has asked us to do, we are filled with strength beyond ourselves. It is rare that ministers stop long enough to ask, God, do you even want me to do this? But it
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may just be worth it. Think about it: if God wanted more sermons, couldnt He just raise up more preachers on His own? Is God able to have the rocks cry out? Of course He is. More than wanting you to go and just DO things for Him, He wants you to hear from Him first. When we are tapped into the voice of God, and are hearing clearly, when we are carefully heeding His instructions in our lives no matter where it may take us, we will be more than supplied with strength beyond ourselves. When we are obedient, He will make a way where there is no way. Wash-out will be blotted out, and the life of victory that He promises will surely flow through us!

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Listening
All day I have been trying to listen. I have been trying to listen to God. I have been trying to hear His word. I have been trying to hear His word for my life, His word for those around me, His word for ANYTHING. This entertainment/distraction driven society, I have come to a new level of awareness of my distance from God. By distance, I mean realizing actually that God is. What do I mean by this? If you and I truly (I mean really, seriously, truly, with-everythingwithin-us truly) believed that God is real, would we not drop everything we are doing to obey His desire for our lives? The obvious answer to that question fresh in mind creates this revelation of how extremely little I act as if God were real; I mean actually real. I know that He has wanted me to press in with
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my prayer life. I used to pray for hours daily. Recently, I have been so consumed with my work and projects and such, that I will (of course) "do it later." So, I have decided to try with the little things, like listening. Listening for Him, to be more specific. To be honest, it is one of the most potent tools in my spiritual-walk arsenal. Just trying to listen to Him for what His will is on this or that begins to turn one's mind on Him more continuously. Is this even a valid tool for a Christian? I have often wondered if this is valid, or if it is a meager, Americanistic approach to spirituality that any moderately faithful Buddhist, Muslim, or Hindu scoff at. (Maybe not "scoff". That word seems as if it should be reserved for the British.) Well, if you ask Lawrence, it is a VERY valid approach to having a real relationship with God. (Not Lawrence of Arabia. That would be more Islamic than anything. AND he was a Brit.) Brother Lawrence, the eternal soul whose life was revealed in "Practicing the Presence of God," was quoted as often saying that just listening for God in the little things was his key to a powerful walk in God. He went to be with the Lord in 1691. 300 years later and his life still has a HUMONGOUS impact
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on the Christian brethren. His life MUST have been anointed by the presence of God. And his words can be relied upon for wisdom on how to live. He believed that listening for Him was the key. I challenge you: this week, take little moments and little decisions to listen to hear what God is saying. In the midst of the business and chaos, in the middle of our electronically-charged lives stop to hear what He is saying to you.

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Elis Disobedience
When thinking about obedience, the traditional verses enter my mind like a school full of gradeschoolers gathering in a gymnasium. But one thing in particular found its way to me today. 1st Samuel 3:3. (And, the surrounding verses for context, of course.) and the lamp of God had not yet gone out [was about to go out], and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the LORD where the ark of God was, If you have followed the life of Eli, his heretical and perverted sons, and the young boy, Samuel, you may already have an idea of what is going on.
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The Bible says that it was a time when the Word of the Lord was precious. In fact, it goes so far as to say that no one had open vision any longer. This INCLUDED the high priest, Eli. How difficult it must have been that Eli who once had vision, now could not see openly. As his natural sight was dying, so was his spiritual insight. He no longer had the ability to see, nor oversee the nation of Israel. God even sent another prophet to warn Eli. Eli knew that the things his sons were doing were unjust and wrong, yet he did not utterly punish them. They continued perverting the sacrifices of God. After warning Eli by sending a prophet, one final misdemeanor performed broke the camels back. It was not an act of defilement, but an act of disobedience that caused God to declare that He had forever turned his back on the family line of Eli. The lamp of God almost, almost flickered out. What is so important about this? Do you know WHAT lamp this particular lamp is?

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This is the lamp that in Exodus 27:20 God instructed the Israelites to NEVER go out. It was the symbol of Gods presence in the temple, as it shone at all times. Some even believe that it was representative of the lamp that passed between the sacrifice which marked the covenant between God and Abraham in Genesis 15:17. This same lamp was about to flicker out. Elis sons were irreverent toward anything holy, so it was up to Eli to ensure that the lamp of God remained. Yet, Elis vision was dim. He could hardly see anything at all. He had come to live in partial darkness at all times. How could he be expected to even know if the lamp of God was going dim? Parallel this to Elis spiritual life and you can quickly see the sad state that this once-powerful man of God was now living in. He moved about feebly from room to room in a dark cloud, unable to know that the presence of God was fading. The moment that his personal comfort came before protecting the presence of God, the moment before the lamp was extinguished, the Lord called out to a young boy in the night season. Samuel.
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I can imagine Samuel, thinking that his master, Eli, had called him went running through the halls of the temple. As he passed the lamp of God, I am sure that he stopped in partial terror. Had the lamp gone out? As he approached, I can see him noticing the last fading light, quickly refilling the oil so that it burned bright once again, then continuing on his dash to visit his master. I can almost imagine him totally stunned to find out that his master was snoring. When he first stumbled upon the fading lamp of God, I am sure that he must have concluded that Eli had been attending to other duties. Samuel must have sheepishly refilled the lamp expecting to find Eli asking him to do just that. Instead, Eli was deep asleep. Even after rousing his master, Samuel found that Eli had no clue that the lamp of God was almost extinguished. This negligence of Elis was repaid with total reproach from God. As He has said, I want obedience more than sacrifice!

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This principle of Gods shone brightly that night. It took the innocent concern of a young servant boy to rekindle the presence of God for all of Israel. Which carries me toward my new revelation (I use that word lightly) on obedience. It was more important to Elis sons to do the daily sacrifices than to have a tender heart to hear the Lord and be obedient. It was more important to Eli, old as he may have been, to rest than to tend to the presence of God for all of Israel. What dreadful thing would have happened if at that moment the lamp of God was extinguished?! Here is the unique thing about Samuel. The Bible says that Samuel did not yet know the Word of the Lord. (By the end of the night, he would! In fact, Eli was so hungry for the Word of the Lord, that he threatened Samuel with a curse the next morning if he did not share what the Lord said.) But Samuel was sensitive to the things of God. Samuel was tender-hearted toward what God deemed was important to Him. Obedience is like that. You can be obedient to the Lord and not know all of His laws. You can do this by simply being tender-hearted and passionate about what He is passionate about. You can be obedient by being sensitive enough
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to hear Him, even if you do not recognize His voice. By doing so, Samuel rekindled the light in Israel, re-established the Word of the Lord for His people, and became the conduit for the Lord to move in Sauls life, in Davids life, and in the lives of generations of believers the world over. Many people have made sacrifices for God, and go unrecorded. The obedient have been aweinspiring, and motivate us to heed the Lord to this day.

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Uh, Quiet Please

Obedience, I am finding, is everything. In the young years of Samuels life, the things that opened the door to the miraculous in his life was a series of acts of obedience. Hannah being obedient to her vow to the Lord by bringing Samuel to Eli. Samuel being obedient to keep the lamp of God burning, even when the high priest failed to do so. Eli heeding the Word of the Lord as received from Samuel that fateful night. But how did these people actually hear the Lord? It was recently noticed by a good friend, Elizabeth Carpenter, that I had written a blog about Listening, and then one about Obedience. She noted how appropriate that was since one must be listening to God to be obedient to Him. (Now the second and third chapters of this book! Go, Liz!)
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Her observation was quite impressive to me and got me to thinking. What precedes listening? The answer came to me in the still of the morning: quiet. It takes quietness to be able to listen (to be able to be obedient.) We must get quiet before the Lord to be able to hear what he has to say to us. The best example of this is what happened this morning during my prayer time. It was blustery with wisps of drizzle in the dark of the morning. When I got there, the cold breeze carried tiny beads of rain to my face. It was perfect to keep my senses sharp and attuned to the quiet. I began to pray several times, but I felt God say to me, would you stop that already? This confused me momentarily, but I fell quiet again. That is when I sensed that God was speaking to me along the lines of an Emerson quote I had recently read. "What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think....you will always
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find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." Emerson God echoed this in my spirit. He said, I need you to learn how to be quiet. If you can learn to be quiet, you can focus your thoughts. This is key, because I need you to be able to listen to My voice in the middle of the crowd; in the middle of chaos. You have to be able to hear my voice at all times. Even though the masses will be loud and speaking, if you can learn to quiet yourself and listen, even in public in the chaos, you will be powerful indeed. That being said, I picked up some material on Smith Wigglesworth and found that this was one of his secrets. It was also the secret of Brother Lawrence. It was the secret that Jesus used in front of his accusers. Other observations of quiet are that the quiet brings vision. When you are quiet, it allows clarity. It allows God to speak in a way that you know that you know He spoke. When that
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happens, He can speak direction to you. And when God speaks direction, vision comes to fill in those places. I was very intrigued by these thoughts. Suffice it to say that today I practiced being quiet to hear the Lord to be obedient. My most significant observation is how quickly being obedient to God will place you in uncomfortable situations! (He told me to tell one girl, whom I did not know, that He loves her.) The second observation came just as quickly: how we let faithless fear get in our way; how easy it is to be disobedient. (I did not speak to that girl.) If I truly believed that God was speaking to me, if I were confident that it was the creator of heaven and earth, I would have been obedient. But faithless thoughts prevented me. (Are you sure that is God? How can you be sure it was Him? Do you know His voice well enough? That is just wrong socially! Dont do it.) If Christians got gut-level honest, they would admit to these same thoughts.
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Just the same, if Christians got gut-level obedient, we would have a revival on our hands. Here is to waking up tomorrow, and mustering the courage to a) be quiet, b) listen, and c) be obedient!

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Obedience in the Little Things

The start of obedience is obeying in the little things. Thank you, Captain Obvious. Look, pal, how to identify the little things is a major stumbling block for many Christians. How do we become sensitive and respond to Gods instructions for the little things? To be honest, many of us are looking way out to the horizon for an answer to a problem. All the while God has placed the answer in your heart. You would know this if you had a) gotten quiet, and b) listened.

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Now is just the part of implementation: obedience. We know it takes great faith to be a missionary or heal people. We know it takes great faith to move mountains. We know it takes great faith to speak in tongues or prophesy. But, when was the last time that you heard God tell you to do one of these things? It is rare for Him to do so. (For the record, I believe that entire lives should be full of the miraculous.) I bet the more likely case is that if I were to ask you the last thing that God asked of you, you would tell me that it was a small thing. And I bet you struggled to complete it. I sure did! I told the truth a day or so ago when I mentioned that God wanted me to just walk over and tell a girl I did not know that God loved her. To this moment I regret it. What next thing would God have asked of me were I to have been, and continued to be, obedient in that little thing?
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Compared to preaching to millions, as Rhinehart Bonnke does in Africa, crossing the room to say 3 words (God loves you) is EASY! Yet, I was not faithful in that little thing. (Wait a minutes, isnt that the type of thing I have been praying that God would ask of me? If not that, then what?!) And I am not talking about small beginnings. Despise not small beginnings. I am talking about our habit of hearing God for small things is what leads us to hear Him for big things. If we are not sensitive enough to hear Him, believe it was Him, and obey Him for the tiniest of acts, we are definitely going to doubt that inner voice when He asks us to do freaky things. If you look at 1st Corinthians 13:1-4, you get a great depiction of the difference between big and little things. You will quickly recognize this passage as The Love Chapter; that chapter about love. What does love have to do with obedience, Grant? If you look at verse 4 of this chapter, you get this:

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Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant It goes on. Again, you are familiar with this chapter, I am sure. (If not, open your local Bible and read it twice!) The point is that to say that being loving is being patient, you are seeing the little things in action. How often has a distressed wife, about to leave her husband, exclaim He doesnt do the little things? How often has a husband felt the same way? Often, when the little things are being done, love is nearby. When a husband encourages his wife for her success instead of envying her, love is nearby. When a man buys groceries for the poor guy on the corner, love is nearby. When we are bold enough to do the little things, the things we know we ought to even without a voice from heaven, we are experiencing love; as God defines it. That is perhaps why Mother Teresa is known as the Saint of Small Things (her canonization is
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not official yet). She was full of loving acts. Her loving acts, an accumulation of many small things, are what make us marvel at the degree of her obedience to God. Find the courage to do the little things today that He is asking of you. It may be uncomfortable. It may put you out, but there is nothing more important that implementing obedience that on the littlest of things. Only when we live a life of little things, will God call us to be obedient in the big.

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Fear of the Face of Man

We generally do not obey what the Lord is having us do out of fear. More than that, we look at the heroes of the Bible and say to ourselves, well, they lived in another time. They were just superheroes in their own right. They never had the social stigmas

Obedience is Everything

When I say everything, I mean everything! Check out Romans 5:19 (Amplified version): For, just as by one mans disobedience (failing to hear, heedlessness and carelessness) the many were constituted
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sinners, so by one mans obedience the many will be constituted righteous (made acceptable to God, brought into right standing with Him.) There it is, in plain sight! It shows the beginning and the end right there. It refers to the beginning of mans trek on the earth (Adams disobedience), and comes right back to the redemption of man (Christs life of obedience, obedient death, and obedient in living again.) In fact, I dare say that the only thing we have to do from here until our days are finished on this earth is be obedient. Obedient to what? Good question. We must be obedient to what God has said, and what He is saying to us. Right here. Right now. God IS speaking. We are just not listening. In fact, in the Amplified Version of the Bible, it lists failing to hear as an act of
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disobedience! We are EXPECTED to hear from God. Anything less is being disobedient. And I believe we do get unction from the Lord quite often. We have just conditioned ourselves to reject Him. We have conditioned ourselves to rationalize away unction to help others, act on His instructions, or just get away in His presence. Well, do you notice that heedlessness is also listed under disobedience? I did. That means that we HAVE to heed what we feel that He is saying. One that I almost succumbed to today: carelessness. I have known that the Lord had desired me to be writing what I feel He is teaching me on. (Hence all of this Obedience stuff. He has had me on it for days! You think I may have a problem with it?!) Today, the day got away from me. Carelessly I forgot my calling for this season to write. When I normally turn in to bed, I realized that I had not written. Do I get up and write, promise myself to catch up tomorrow with the writing, or just scratch it all together? On any other day, a week ago, two weeks ago, I would have let it go. BUT, it is not about the
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writing, or even the quality of the writing. It is about the obedience of doing what I was told without asking questions. The rest just flows.

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Grace to Be Obedient
Ultimately, obedience requires grace. Why do I say that? First, it says it in scripture. Romans 5:19 shows that I am not constituted righteous (totally obedient) by anything I have done. It was one mans sin that got people into the sin-mess. It was also One Mans obedience that covers when I have not been obedient. Secondarily, like tonight, I need the grace. I was supposed to write on a scripture in Jeremiah 1, and cross reference it to Joshua 1. But it is late. I went to a movie with Terry and Donna. (Another act of disobedience for the violence, drug use, and nudity.)

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I need Gods grace. I needed Christ to be obedient for me for nights like tonight. Because of that grace, though, I can wake up tomorrow and begin anew; attempting to be obedient. I can rest easy, knowing that I obeyed when Christ obeyed on the cross. It affects my victory negatively, but not my grace. Now, I am going to receive that grace so that I can be empowered to be fully obedient once again. It is an unfair advantage to be sure! I thank God for that.

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HOW to be Obedient
Having come this far, we know we ought to be courageous and step out and DO what the Lord has called us to do. We are on fire and passionate for His calling, and want more of Him. But we constantly hit this brick wall to obedience; uhm, for lack of a better term, disobedience. We dont have confidence that He will move, so we dont act on what He says, and then we think, well, it probably wouldnt have worked anyway. So, how can we overcome this obstacle to obedience? Well, lets find someone who has dealt with being courageous for the things of God.
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Joshua has the best introduction to ministry I can think of. If you havent done it yet, read Joshua 1. God speaks to him just He spoke to Moses. Throughout God calling Joshua to step up, He tells Joshua 5 or 6 times to be strong and courageous. Then the congregation tells him to be strong and courageous. But then God hands him the key to being obedient and, thus, successful in the things of God. In verse 8, God zeros in on the main secret to how any of us can begin down the path of bold obedience. This book of the law shall not depart out of they mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then though shalt have good success. God lays it out. To be obedient, just get in the Word. Live the Word. Breath the Word. Think the Word. Learn the Word. And thus live the Word. Often we doubt what we hear in our spirits and do not act on it. We justify this disobedience any way we can. Usually the real problem is that we are not familiar enough with Who God
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is, and the only way to do that is through His word. We can better discern the voice in our Spirit by whether or not it matches the Word the Lord has already spoken in the Bible. That way we will not have excuses for not acting when we receive unction to heal the sick, raise the dead or minister in some other Godordained way. We MUST act on what we have heard, assuming that it is accurate and in line with the Word and nature of God. The only way we know if it is in line with the nature of God is if we know God. The best way to get to know God is to get to know His word. This week, delve further into the Word than ever before. Press in. Be diligent with it. Be strong and courageous to act on His Word, and THEN you should make your way prosperous, and THEN you shall have good success!

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Carefulness
Once one has learned to quiet themselves, listen to God, and heed the word, there is a stumbling block that affects almost everyone; the frailty of our minds that causes us to be careless. In Romans 5:19 (AMP), there are several possible definitions of disobedience. I mentioned before that simply failing to hear God was considered disobedience. The one that has gotten my attention lately has been that carelessness is an act of disobedience. Why this has my attention is that I am very away of how prone I am to negligence. Simply put, I have generally been pretty forgetful. I forget names. I forget small errands or responsibilities. Whats worse; I often forget the things that I feel that I have heard from God in prayer or throughout the day.
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You would think that once you start to zero in on acknowledging His voice that you would become a super-warrior for the things of God. Though that is true in many ways, you really become more aware of your frailness. The closer you come to hearing Gods voice, the more obvious our propensity for disobedience becomes. That all being said the last two days have been an issue of disobedience. The day has gotten away from me twice now. I have been traveling and have had a busy schedule. By night time (when I write) my mind has raced and hit a thousand topics. I have been prepped for bed when suddenly the thought hits my mind. I forgot to write on what He told me to. So, I drag myself out of bed, and set down to writing. I am often sheepish in doing so because I realize that I had forgotten what the Lord was telling me just that morning. I had been negligent with the Word of God! This reality of the stories of Jeremiah, Isaiah, and all of the ancient prophets is that they were careful with the Word they heard. They didnt let the Word of God fall to the floor.
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With the chaos of the modern world, it is easy to lose focus and have ones thoughts jump from one topic to another. As a person who has overcome ADHD, I easily get careless with my thoughts. I ponder one thing and then the next. Even if I think of Godly things many times they are not the items that I have been instructed to focus on. I must exercise care to rehears the words that I have received from God. To run in obedience, to act with faithfulness to the unction in our spirits, we must take care to remember, write down, act on and heed the words we receive. With a careful obedience to the Word of God in our lives, we will run deeper than we ever thought possible, and live the lives we were intended to live.

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Joy: The Fruit of Obedience

I am overjoyed where the Lord has brought me to. Being obedient to Him has taken me around the world to 10 different countries. Being obedient has shown me cafs in South Africa, and surfing in Hawaii, and chocolate in Venezuela. Being obedient has had me take the pulpit in Florida and Kenya. I have seen the sick healed, and seen the captive set free. I have watched my mentor flow in depths of the spirit that would cause people to stand in awe of who God is. I have seen rains fall for weeks at the mere prayer of the faithful. Even this morning, as I approached my prayer spot, I was overcome with joy. How did God bring me here? How did I end up being paid for my creativity? How did I end up being paid to grow and learn and prosper? Doesnt He know
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where I came from; what I have done? What events did He arrange just to bring me to this one point in time? There is so much joy and appreciation for who I have become (especially compared to the life I led previously!) Even how I survived that past with so few emotional problems, the mystery of how He brought me through, causes me severe joy! That is how it was for the servants of God before Christ came. The prophets all spent time with kings of nations. Those who were obedient were given great victories on the battlefield. They enjoyed love stories like Jacob and Rachel. They traveled all over the known world. They saw so much, and were ever in awe of who God was. Likewise, the disciples and the early church all had times of immense joy. The Bible tells us in several gospels that when Peter and John left the empty tomb that they were full of joy. Simply put, being obedient brings us the joy we so long for and desire!

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Being American, I have observed the difficulty it is often for other Americans to want to be obedient to anything. Call us protestants. Call us revolutionaries. Fine! Whatever! The obedience factor is hard for us to get. It is even harder to conceive that we will ever experience joy unless we take it for ourselves. Which is why it is so hard for us to believe that by submitting our entire beings to God, being 100% obedient to the Jiminy-Cricket voice we are hearing in our head, that we will ever live the life we have truly dreamed of. I assure it is true. Truth be told, the very reason we are not experiencing truly satisfying joy is because we are trying so hard to make it happen for ourselves! What if I told you that we need to QUIT trying?! What if I told you that we just needed to be obedient to the voice in our spirit? What if I told you that Jesus actually told us this same thing, plain as day. Read the entire chapter of John 15, but I want to zero in on verse 11 in the Amplified Version:

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I have told you these things [His commands] that My joy and delight may be in you, and that your joy and gladness may be in full measure and complete and overflowing. Overflowing! Can you believe that?! Well, you should, and so should I. Its there in red and white, friends. You see, Jesus spends the first part of John 15 talking about abiding in the vine as branches. How does He recommend that we abide in the vine? By being obedient. What will that produce? Our overflowing joy! It may seem counter-intuitive; especially as Americans. But this walk with Christ is a walk of obedience. It is not an obedience you would find at a dog-training school. It is the obedience that produces that which is good and prosperous for us. The best part is that He promises that it will bring us joy. To be honest, the first few years of my salvation were hard. The transition of my old lifestyle to my new lifestyle was a slow, long path. But, just
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8 years into this life I look back and think that it wasnt that hard. The difficulties were nothing compared to the joy and awe I feel day to day now. Consider deeply how to be more obedient. Reading John 15 will bring additional insights as to how. But, when things get tough, keep in mind that on the other side of those obstacles is a joy that exceeds our greatest imaginations! And when that I happens, I pray that your joy may be full!

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Obedience and Faith

So, HOW can we live an obedient life with Christ? How can we succeed with this Christian life? Here is the good news, and the bad news, (in reverse order.) The Bad News: You cant. The Good News: You CANT! He can! He did! Pointe blank, you and I have no way to live totally obedient lives. Oh yeah, we can come close. Yes, we can affect a lot of our living victoriously here and how. But, ultimately, it will
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depend on His grace to come through; the grace that He has already paid for. How to tap that grace? Faith. The only way to live this life of obedience is Faith. We have to have faith that we are hearing from Him. We have to have faith to heed what we are hearing. We have to have faith to observe what we are hearing with care. And Paul says this to some people who had stopped living by faith, and started living as if they could be obedient to God in their flesh. If you dont know who I am talking about, it was those silly Galatians. Paul stated some words to them that we need to hear. If you know this one, sing along: I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

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Now, we could spend an entire 12 other books, blogs and chapters about faith. I will let you do that on your own time. But, to summarize, faith in something will produce a fruit relating to the thing you are having faith in. From Faith to Fruit, I would say. If you have faith in the chair (that it will hold), then you will sit in it! It doesnt mean that the chair will hold you! You will still try to sit in it. If you have faith that chocolate raspberry cheesecake tastes good, you will bite. Whether or not it has a foul worm in the middle of it or not is irrelevant! You will bit because you believe. Faith in something produces an action. Likewise, if we have faith in God, we will act on it. It doesnt matter whether or not we will receive positive or negative repercussions. If we have faith in it we will act. That is why so many seers today claim that the majority of Christians do not believe, or have faith, in God; there are so few actions happening to obey what God is calling us to do.
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That being said, we need to constantly cultivate our faith in Him. The more we believe the more we will act on (being obedient to) the Word that the Lord is speaking to us daily. And, unlike the Galatians, let it be spirit-started and spirit-finished. Start your walk with God in faith; faith that He will move, that He has called you, that He will lead your way. Along with that, END your walk with faith in God; faith that He has put you here, faith that everything you are going through was known by Him when He called you. And let that push you to act on what you know you should do next. One step at a time is what will bring us into obedience. Heeding His word, through faith in the Son of God to deliver, is the thing that will cause us to continuously draw closer to God through obedience! Rinse and repeat!

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Do you know who you are?

I dont know who you are. (But I would like to! Contact me using any of the information in the back of this book.) Many times when we are lost, confused, or life is not going our way, the problem is that we do not know who we are. (No, its not the funky looking mayo you ate from the fridge earlier. But you SHOULD get that checked out.) More than that, we dont know where to go to learn who we are. The good news is that God knows who you are, and who you are meant to be. Uhm, DUH! Hes God. Of course He knows. If you have not made a commitment to follow God and be obedient to His call on your life, take the time to do so now.
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Just pray this prayer with me, silently or out loud. Either way, its up to you. Lord, forgive me for how far from You I have gotten. Please, put in me a clean heart, and renew a right spirit in me. Forgive me of my past and who I was. Become Lord and savior in my life, TODAY! To be honest, thats all it takes; to ask the Lord to BE your Lord. And then do that, day in and day out. Call me if you get stuck with anything!

Opulently, Grant R. Nieddu +1.561.247-2686 Grant.nieddu@gmail.com www.GrantNieddu.com

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I think thats all she wrote, friends! My contact information is above. Watch for more on my blogs. Check out my website www.GrantNieddut.com. I encourage you to also check out anything by my mentor, Terry Kruse. You can view his material at www.CanGodGodCan.com. Feel free to interact with me or my team at any time! God bless, and keep pressing in!

Grant!

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