Know God, Obey Jesus

Good morning and welcome to Our Daily Walk.

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Alton was a really good man. In fact, he was an extraordinary man in some respects. He had served his country in the Second World War serving under Patton. He had lived a simple but distinguished life all in the same community.

Most people knew him or knew of him. He was very kind and friendly. His small home place included a large garden each summer and he was always ready to share with others. He loved the outdoors. In fact, nature was more or less a god to Alton. He would tell his wife that the outdoors was his own way of worshipping. He didn’t have any use for Jesus or the church.

Alton had always been a very healthy man. Although small in stature, pound for pound he was more than able to pull his weight and get the chores done.

Somewhat before he turned 80, he became ill and was diagnosed with a disease that would eventually take his life. Despite his wife’s requests, Alton still had no use for Jesus or the church.

As the disease continued to diminish his physical body Alton became confined to home. His hospital bed was placed in the same room that he was born in some 80 years earlier. Life’s cycle was about to come full circle ending at the same place it began.

I was able to visit with him some before he died. My last visit to him was exactly one week before his death. During that visit I pressed the question to Alton. “Don’t you want to be a Christian and have the hope of eternal life?” I knew that for years he had heard about the Christian life from his devoted wife. She had been faithful to Christ for years, rarely missing a worship and active in many ways. The only time I had ever recalled him in the church building was during the baptism of a teenage girl that Alton’s wife had picked up and taken to church for years. Yet he knew that he needed to be right with God.

At first Alton was not responsive, thinking perhaps that he had to physically be able to go to the church building or worship services in order to become a Christian. But after when we explained that he could become a Christian that very hour in his own house, he changed his answer and obeyed the gospel, putting on Christ.

Alton made his confession that he believed Jesus is the Son of God and then we immersed his frail, jaundiced body in his own bathtub. One week later Alton died.

Paul warns of the consequences of not obeying the gospel. In 2 Thessalonians 1:7-9 he states that Jesus will come “from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who do not know God, and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. These shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power.”

Many people like Alton may feel that they know God from nature, but they have not obeyed the gospel of Jesus Christ. True, we may know the attributes of God from nature. Paul describes this in Romans 1:18-23. But to know God is to obey God and obey His Son. Paul describes those who know of God from nature, but worship their own forms of god and turn their backs on the true God.

For the majority of his 80 years, this man rejected salvation that was continually offered to him. It wasn’t until his final hours that he finally saw that simply being a good man is not enough to be saved. Neither is simply acknowledging God’s beauty in nature. To be saved, one must obey the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Peter says in 2 Peter 3:15 that “the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation.” In other words, each day that the Lord delays His return is another day of opportunity for us to get right with God and obey the gospel of His son. Know God. Obey Jesus.

On Our Daily Walk today, may we make today the day that we choose to obey the gospel of Jesus Christ, knowing that today is a precious gift from God, another golden opportunity to do what we need to do.

Our thought for the day: “The fear of death is cancelled by faith in Christ.”

May God bless you on your daily walk.

© Our Daily Walk, Mike Baker, 2007. Permission is granted to copy these articles provided they are not sold and the author's name and copyright are included.