A plethora of “seeking” in this title to this blog, and I have no idea where I am headed, other than to say the title was triggered by part of a blog that I was lead to read. As I started to read the blog my eyes chose to run down the page and rested upon a subheading entitled, “Love & Obedience,” all a part of this person’s blog called the “Bondservant.” I suppose you or I might initially react with, “What in heaven’s name does love and obedience have to do with being a ‘bondservant’?” The word servant automatically raises a ‘negative’ vibration within my spirit; it appears as a negative thing; reminds me of the slavery of the blacks in the United States and Canada, the entrenchment of the Africans in bottomless pits of boats, taken in chains as slave labour, bonded and servants to another nationality to do their sweaty labour, for next to nothing.
So I raise the question again, “What in heaven’s name could possibly tie together love and obedience with being a bond servant?” Servants were enslaved against their will; they did not serve out of obedience and love. I rather think there was much hatred to be found in their hearts and a desire to run, to be free…to disobey.
I post for you that part of the article, and if you click on this hyperlink you will find the entire article on the site, “SightedMoon”.
Love And Obedience
What does this say to us? The servant was willing to give up his freedom out of love for his master. That was a decision based not on fear, not on intellectual assent, but upon the condition and attitude of his heart. This seems to be the message that the Father conveys in this principle and that tells me that ?lohiym isn’t focused primarily on what my hands do as much as what is in my heart to do. In other words, he may have my hands and even my mind, but if He doesn’t have my heart, then He doesn’t have me. Many ‘serve’ ?lohiym, but not really, because they are not doing His Will or His desire, but their own way with a man made religious covering they have made for themselves. It is what they choose to do for ?lohiym and not what He has asked them do in, as a servant of His master.
This principle is expressed in the Hebrew, shaa ma, (Deuteronomy 6:4-5) which begins, “Hear, O Yisra’el: Y?hwoah our ?lohiym is one: And thou shalt love Y?hwoah your ?lohiym with all thine heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” Notice that love that prompts true obedience begins in the heart.
We must go back to the beginning of creation, our creation. We were created by YHWH out of pure and unselfish love; thus we were created purely love by pure love, and created unselfish by unselfish. The first man and then wo-man sought fellowship with YHWH, as we were created to do; to seek Him. We were free and we were given what I precariously call the “gift” of choice. We could choose to seek Him or choose not to seek Him. For a while, although not told so, I believe we chose and did seek him all the time, and especially as we are told, in the cool of the evening, as the sun was setting on the beauty all about us, surely our hearts sang out and wanted to fellowship and converse with He who had created all this beauty for us to behold and enjoy at will. I imagine each new day that we had found us gazing upon yet something new again, something not there the day before…like a rose; yesterday we saw things of a different shape and form and had, because He had told us to name all things, called it a “tulip” because when the four fragrant petals were slightly apart, they indeed looked like two lips. Then we see this beautiful pure white blossom that seemed to have just “arose” over night, so we call it the rose, for it rose before us to grant us the gift of beauty to behold; it wasn’t and then it was.
Hearts always seeking that which had created us and all, seeking Him and His spectaculor glory, just to be in His presence. We were indeed “bonded” by love, and obedient out of love, pure love for him. We, you and I, out of a pure abundance of love sought out him, wanted to bond with Him, to serve Him….because boy oh boy did we ever love Him.
Then something happened. What was it? Did we start taking all of this for granted; can you relate. We see new things created right before our eyes, day in and day out, and all of a sudden they no longer enthralled us, no longer captured our hearts in awe. They simply were; neither expected nor appreciated, they simply were. Perhaps we even stomped on a few of those beautiful roses that once had knocked us off our feet with their beauty and glorious aroma. Same old same old perhaps our thoughts, though unspoken.
Then was the next step to take forgranted the unasked for love bestowed by Him upon us, His desire to fellowship with us. Did that too become humdrum? Did we get bored, looking for new things? Was it then the thoughts started to wander, and that negative whisper took hold inside us; tempting us to ask for more than was needed; wanting …. that we get the credit, that we be glorified, that we “arise” brighter than the beautiful rose? Who knows when or at what time, but at some point, the seeking turned from Him to our own personal lusts; a need to satisfy self and no one else.
There is scripture that tells us, “Seek and you shall find.” But we can’t and we mustn’t take it out of context. There is another scripture that tells us that, “We have not because …. we ask….to consume it upon our own…(personal and selfish) lusts.” Do you see the connection; hear the message. Seek and you will find – but scripture also tells us that, “Anything you ask in my name, shall be given unto you.” That asking in Yahshua’s name is an asking such that, if it were Yahshua doing the asking, it would indeed be something that he asked for…and what little we do know about his life, we do know that when he asked, he always asked for the benefit of someone or something else; never for himself. So, if I ask YHWH for a, say, “new car”, is it something that Yahshua might ask for, and if so under what circumstances? If he were here today and he asked his father, YHWH, for a car, you can bet your bottom dollar it would be because he needed it to “serve” someone else’s needs out of his pure love for them, and wanting to make them happy, to do something good for another person. It would not have been for some selfish want he might have – I will stick to that as a truth from what little I know from reading, but even more so, from what the “soul of my heart” tells me about Yahshua – who gave his very life for me!
Yet another scripture tell us that, “Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” And yet another tells us to “Fear the Lord.” For a lot of years I had a really hard time with that, because you see I was raised in the Roman Catholic church, and frankly was scared to death of “Big Bad God” who would strike me dead with a lightning bolt if I ever “stepped inside a protestant church!” I was scared to death of HIM and had no idea who He was – other than someone to be feared. So, swinging from RC into Pentacostalism…it was like the pendulum swung to the extreme opposite – nothing to fear, God forgives; the law was destroyed, you don’t have to obey the Torah, Yahshua did away with the law! You know, we can make the scripture say exactly what we want to hear; just take it out of context and you’ll get a neatly fitting perfect justification for your needs, to justify (what your spirit knows is) a wrong action!
Yahshua showed up to show us the way back to the Father, He who created us in love. Yahshua became the visible form of YHWH’s perfect love; a mirror for us to see what we really look like to the Father – each and every one of us, created in pure love by pure love. We lost our way, and the Lamb came to lead the lost sheep back home to Abba.
Pure love leads to obedience; a desire to never hurt the Father, to cause Yahshua pain or any more pain than he already suffered in his death…freely giving his life. I seek because I seek to know the Love that created me; I seek to know the Father’s heart, and in knowing His Heart, I shall know the purity and goodness and perfection that is my heart! I seek to obey….as in marriage vows we frail humans promise to love and obey…even in our human weakness and fraility, our hearts do want to please our spouse.
For me love leads to obedience simply because I want to know Him and in knowing Him shall know a bit more about me and that perfect love that I am…just as YHWH said of Himself, “I AM.”
Surely because my heart’s desire is, I believe, in line with something that Yahshua would desire, then indeed, “I shall find.”
