God's Plans Demand Implicit Obedience.

So he arose and went to Zarephath, as before he had gone to Cherith, and as presently he would go to show himself to Ahab. 

A Christian lady, who had learned amongst us the blessedness of a surrendered life, and was soon after obliged to find
another home across the ocean, came back quite recently, over thousands of miles of land and water, to visit the scene of that act, in the hope that she would find again her former joy, which had faded like the hues of a too radiant dawn. 

But to her disappointment, though she worshiped on the
same sacred spot, and listened to the sounds of the well-known voice, she could not recover the priceless jewel she had lost. 

At last the cause appeared. 

She had been living in conscious disobedience to the will of Christ, expressed through her conscience and His Word. 

The motives that prompted the disobedience had a touch of nobility about them; but it was disobedience still, and it
wrought its own penalty.
 
This is the true cause of failure in so many Christian lives. 

We catch sight of God's ideal...

We are enamored with it...

We vow to be only His...
 
We use the most emphatic words...

We dedicate ourselves upon the altar...

For a while we seem to tread another world, bathed in heavenly light.
 
Then there comes a command clear and unmistakable.
 
We must leave some beloved Cherith, and go to some unwelcome Zarephath...

We must speak some word...

Take some step...

Cut off some habit...

And we shrink from it...

The cost is too great...

But, directly we refuse obedience, the light dies off the
landscape of our lives, and dark clouds fling their
shadows far and near. 

We do not win salvation by our obedience; that
is altogether the gift of God, to be received by faith
in the finished work of Jesus Christ our Lord.
 
But, being saved, we must obey. 

Our Savior adjures us, by the love we bear to Himself, to keep
His commandments. 

And He does so because He wants us to taste His rarest gifts, and because He knows that in the keeping of His commandments there is great reward.
 
Search the Bible from board to board, and see if strict, implicit, and instant obedience has not been the secret of the noblest lives that ever lit up the dull monotony of the world.

The proudest title of our King was the Servant of Jehovah. 

And none of us can seek to realize a nobler aim than that which was the inspiration of His heart: "I come to do Thy will, O my God." 

Mary, the simple-hearted mother, uttered a word which is
pertinent to every age, when, at the marriage-feast, she turned to the servants and said, "Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it."
 
F. B. Meyer