Disobedient Belief?

John 3:36 Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God remains on him.

My three year old, Eli, skipped the terrible twos but is doing his best to make up for that lost opportunity as a three year old. Drama, tears and a whole lot of disobedience describe his way of life. He is pereceptive though, and just before he sends us completely over the edge he looks up with big brown eyes and says "I'm sorry". He has also learned that some other phrases like "momma your pretty" and "I love you" are useful tools for disciplinary adversion. He is only three, and is a great kid, but he needs discipline. Often when correcting Him, I use Jesus's words of John 14:15 "if you love me you will obey me" (paraphrased). It is quite true when you think it through. If Eli really loves us, he will grow in his obedience to us as he understands our desire for his own good. No matter what his words will say, as the years pass, Eli's true love for us will be shown towards us in the way he obeys us and ultimately God.

The hard truth for me is that for most of my life my relationship with God pretty much mirrored Eli's actions as a three year old. I would give God the lip service and the random,yet self serving, church attendance and prayers, BUT I had no intentions of submitting to him in obedience. I really had a lot of "bigger fish to fry". Life seemed to offer so many fun and exciting things, so about the last thing on my mind was getting to really know Jesus and striving for what I now know is a Joyful obedience.

The big question is when I was in that state of lip service and no care for obedience was a I saved or lost? John 3:36 makes that clear as a bell - Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God remains on him. Jesus is clearly spelling out that an intellectual ascent of Him, without obedience which marks allegiance to Him, is cold, dark and empty. He echoes this four more times in John 14 to make sure we don't miss this huge point.

I look around at the church in America, and it truly grieves me. We have protestant religions accomodating blatant sin habits in the name of "human compassion". There are many denominations that disregard the bible and its authority over us. The vast majority of church goers rarely read the word of God. if we are unwilling to get to know God, and obey Him, Jesus clearly states that we will not see life and the wrath of God is still on us. No matter what we say....

So what are the words of Jesus (this is not an exhasutive list):

>To Love your God with all your heart, soul and mind, and to Love your neighbor as yourself
>To take up our cross and to deny ourselves (matt 22:37-40)
>To make disciples of all nations (Matt 28:18-20)
>Give to the needy and do it in secret (Matt 6:1-4)
> when you fast, do it secretly (Matt 6:16-18)
>Don't be anxious about life (Matt 6:25)
>Be a reconciler - do not promote strife but Love (Matt 5:21-26)
>enter through the narrow gate that leads to life -there are few who find it (Matt 7:13-14)
>Pray with a passion of love towards God, and do not "grand stand" with your prayers to be seen by other people (Matt6:5)
>Jesus's life model shows us a focus on fulfilling the will of God, we find that in the bible, he calls us to do the same (Matt 5:17-20)
>Be humble
>repent of and hate your sins
>Do not judge others(His word has done that already- we just communicate it)

So you can see that Jesus has many things to say about obedience. The big question is are we obeying His words, or are we just giving Him lip service?