Loyalty, Not Feeling
God accepts obedience without emotion, but cannot accept emotion without obedience. To advise generosity and be selfish, to praise heroism and be a coward, to say, "Lord, Lord," and not do the things the Lord says,—this is self-deception and self-destruction. Obedience God will have, and there is no substitute for it. So essential is it to life, so important is it in all physical, intellectual, and spiritual development, that God is willing to wait for grace and beauty, the high color of feeling, the glow of enthusiasm, if he gets plain obedience. He is not afraid for the flower, if he can get the root. Even knowledge, the appreciation of what the commandments are, He is not jealous over, if only we will do our best to keep his commandments as far as we do understand them. He knows that light comes through doing, not through dreaming; that the best way to understand his will is not to try to understand it, but to try to do it. So it is a thousand times better to do God's will without knowing it than to know it without doing it. It is right to say, "I wish I knew God's will more perfectly." It is better to pray, "O God, help me to do thy will, as I know it, more perfectly than ever."
"When saw we thee and fed and clothed and comforted thee? " cried the astonished ones on the right of the judge. They did not realize what they had been doing, but they had done the will of God. Whatever they on the left may have thought or known or hoped or planned, they did not do the will of God. God classified them on this basis. "By thy fruits ye shall be known."
We must put the emphasis of living where God will make his tests of life.
"Why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the things that I say?" Interest yourself in the interesting, be entertained by the entertaining, be absorbed in the absorbing, but do not forget for one day that study, business, pains, pleasures, are only incidental.
Loyalty to God is alone fundamental. Feelings, words, deeds, must be beads strung on the string of duty. Let the world tell you in a hundred ways what your life is for. Say you ever and only, "Lo, I come to do thy will, O my God." Out of that dutiful root grows the beautiful life, the life radically and radiantly true to God,-the only life that can be lived in both worlds.
Maltbie D. Babcock 1858~1901 (excerpt from his book titled Thoughts For Every-Day Living)
Forwarded fromCarli • Saved by Grace
1September 5, 2026 10
