{"id":27299,"date":"2023-07-25T22:00:10","date_gmt":"2023-07-26T05:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/judges-3_12-31-copy\/"},"modified":"2023-07-11T14:12:08","modified_gmt":"2023-07-11T21:12:08","slug":"judges-4_1-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/judges-4_1-10\/","title":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t Put Conditions on Your Obedience to God"},"content":{"rendered":"

Judges 4:1-10\u00a0 \u00a0<\/strong>Click here for Bible Verses<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Hi GAMErs!<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s passage is Judges 4:1-10.\u00a0 Let’s go!<\/p>\n

Judges 4:1-10 (NIV)<\/strong>
\n1\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0After Ehud died, the Israelites once again did evil in the eyes of the\u00a0LORD.
\n2\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0So the\u00a0LORD\u00a0sold them into the hands of Jabin, a king of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor. The commander of his army was Sisera, who lived in Harosheth Haggoyim.
\n3\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0Because he had nine hundred iron chariots and had cruelly oppressed the Israelites for twenty years, they cried to the\u00a0LORD\u00a0for help.
\n4\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lappidoth, was leading Israel at that time.
\n5\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0She held court under the Palm of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim, and the Israelites came to her to have their disputes decided.
\n6\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0She sent for Barak son of Abinoam from Kedesh in Naphtali and said to him, “The\u00a0LORD, the God of Israel, commands you: ‘Go, take with you ten thousand men of Naphtali and Zebulun and lead the way to Mount Tabor.
\n7\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0I will lure Sisera, the commander of Jabin’s army, with his chariots and his troops to the Kishon River and give him into your hands.'”
\n8\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0Barak said to her, “If you go with me, I will go; but if you don’t go with me, I won’t go.”
\n9\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0“Very well,” Deborah said, “I will go with you. But because of the way you are going about this, the honor will not be yours, for the\u00a0LORD\u00a0will hand Sisera over to a woman.” So Deborah went with Barak to Kedesh,
\n10\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0where he summoned Zebulun and Naphtali. Ten thousand men followed him, and Deborah also went with him.<\/em><\/p>\n

On verses 1-10:\u00a0 Deborah was the courageous woman who not only led Israel politically, but also served Israel as a prophetess .\u00a0 Yet when Deborah told Barak that the LORD was commanding him to take ten thousand men to fight the Canaanite army, Barak said he would only go if Deborah went with him.\u00a0 In other words, for Barak it wasn\u2019t enough to hear his leader and a prophet personally telling him God\u2019s Word to go.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t enough that Deborah even gave Barak a specific strategy and told him how God was going to use Barak to defeat Sisera the Canaanite commander (v7).\u00a0 Barak still made his obedience to God\u2019s word conditional upon Deborah going with him.\u00a0 Though Deborah graciously acquiesced and went with Barak, Barak forfeited any honour he would gain from going.<\/p>\n

What can we learn from this?\u00a0\u00a0Don\u2019t put conditions on your obedience to God\u2019s Word.<\/strong>\u00a0 Don\u2019t say, \u201cGod, I will only obey you if\u2026\u201d.\u00a0 When we put conditions on our obedience to God, we not only dishonour God and test God\u2019s patience, even more we forfeit the honour that we could have enjoyed had we obeyed God quickly and unconditionally the first time.<\/p>\n

When we sing songs lyrics like \u201cGod, my life is yours.\u00a0 I surrender to you.\u00a0 I\u2019ll go where you want me to go\u201d, let\u2019s mean what we sing and let\u2019s do what we say we will do, lest we test God\u2019s patience and show ourselves to be hypocrites.<\/p>\n

Father, I am amazed at the grace You showed Barak, but it\u2019s not too different from the grace You have showed me in times when I\u2019ve been slow to obey You or put conditions on my obedience to You.\u00a0 You deserve better than that.\u00a0 Please give me courage like Deborah to go where You want me to go and do what You want me to do without condition.\u00a0 In Jesus\u2019 name, AMEN!<\/em><\/p>\n

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Copyright \u00a9 2021 Justin Lim. All rights reserved.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi GAMErs!<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s passage is Judges 4:1-10.\u00a0 Let’s go!<\/p>\n

Judges 4:1-10 (NIV)
\n1\u00a0\u00a0After Ehud died, the Israelites once again did evil in the eyes of the\u00a0LORD.
\n2\u00a0\u00a0So the\u00a0LORD\u00a0sold them into the hands of Jabin, a king of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor. The commander of his army was Sisera, who lived in Harosheth Haggoyim.
\n3\u00a0\u00a0Because he had nine hundred iron chariots and had cruelly oppressed the Israelites for twenty years, they cried to the\u00a0LORD\u00a0for help.
\n4\u00a0\u00a0Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lappidoth, was leading Israel at that time.<\/p>\n

On verses 1-10:\u00a0 Deborah was the courageous woman who not only led Israel politically, but also served Israel as a prophetess .\u00a0 Yet when Deborah told Barak that the LORD was commanding him to take ten thousand men to fight the Canaanite army, Barak said he would only go if Deborah went with him.\u00a0 In other words, for Barak it wasn\u2019t enough to hear his leader and a prophet personally telling him God\u2019s Word to go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27301,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gametime-sharing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27299"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27302,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27299\/revisions\/27302"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}