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Many people are taught by preachers that since Jesus has done it all for them, all they need to do is to believe. As a result, many are not taking any responsibility for their own action, and they are expecting God to take care of everything for them. Finally they get disappointed.

"For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome" (1Jn.5:3). In the context of the new covenant which Jesus made, we must not think of 'commandments' as merely the Ten Commandments. It refers to anything that the Spirit of Christ tells us to do (Ro.8:2). This goes wider and deeper than the old covenant laws which were mainly related only to our external behaviour. Now we have to obey God to the extent that every thought in our mind has to comply with the heart of God (2Cor.10:5).

We must not think of this as a burden we cannot manage. When we know how much God loves us and what He has done to restore us to Him, we love Him and want to be pleasing to Him in every way. We understand that every command or instruction He gives us is for our good and for our protection from harm. Keeping His commandments keeps us within the boundaries of His care and protection, and then it is that we will be happy and able to enjoy our life. Satan wants to make us think that by giving in to his temptations we can enjoy life. We know it is a lie. Every time we give in to such desires, we ourselves make our future more miserable (Ga.6:8). Just look back on our life and see how we are suffering now for all such mistakes we have made!

On the other hand, the more we comply with the life of God, we find that it reduces the chances of future suffering, and we enjoy God's peace knowing that He is with us.

A major part of the problems we have to deal with in our life now has come from the consequences of our sins in the past, where we disobeyed God and gave in to what our desires demanded from us. When we came to Jesus, even though He has forgiven all those sins, many of their consequences still follow us. They make us feel ashamed of ourselves now (Ro.6:21). To regain that lost ground, now we need to make sure that we don't repeat the things that we used to do, and also that we now learn to 'sow to the Spirit' and reap eternal life.

Obedience is our responsibility. It is not something God will do for us. As He works inside us through the Holy Spirit to give us godly desires, we must work that out in our behaviour. It will be foolish if we wait for God to suddenly give us a godly life. We have to make that choice every time we get tempted. That is when we have to make sure that we are determined in our heart not to sin again but to obey God in everything, including what we think and desire. With this determination we must actually obey every prompting of the Holy Spirit.

If we don't have this heart of obedience, we just don't love Jesus (Jn.14:21). We must not fool ourselves. We are not born again.

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