Disobedience against God is bad, very bad. It is the thing that got Adam removed from the garden, Satan cast out of heaven, King Saul stripped of his kingship, and it kept Moses from entering the land promised to Israel. Acts of disobedience is a dangerous game to play with God, and if committed, it can cost you time and experience in your pursuit of the promises of God, and ultimately even heaven. We know that disobedience can sometimes happen, even when you don’t intend for it to happen, and sometimes it’s just ignorance, deception, or carelessness. That’s different than blatantly rebelling against God. Still, in both cases, disobedience is a sin against God, and you don’t want to continue in it once you know its truth.
Remembering your sin will help you see your need to overcome.
I’m not encouraging disobedience, nor am I making excuses for it, but I am aware that if you are in this world, you have already sinned against God at some point in your life. Remembering what that is will help you understand the need to overcome. This is why we want to focus on what to do once disobedience has happened and you have been made aware of it. To do this, we first need to clarify what true disobedience is to understand what we need to overcome.
What is true disobedience?
The answer is simple, when God speaks to you and gives you a commandment and you don’t do it, you have disobeyed God. In the example of the first man Adam, he disobeyed because God told him exactly what to do, and he didn’t do it. He did the opposite of what he was told to do. He still disobeyed God, whether ignorantly or blatantly, and his disobedience cost him his inheritance.
This disobedience is different from just picking commandments out of the Bible and telling yourself that you have to obey them. Forcing commandments on yourself, requiring that you obey every word, is not true disobedience. When you choose your own commandments, you find out that you can’t do them anyway, and this failure to be obedient and keep those commandments will always negatively affect your confidence. The right way to learn disobedience is to let God tell you what to do and if you disobey Him, He will revisit you and tell you what you did wrong as He did with Adam.
True disobedience requires God to speak to you.
If your disobedience is against Him, then it would make sense that He would be the one that spoke to you and gave you the commandment to obey. You can’t pick commandments for yourself and then say you disobeyed God. What you did was disobey yourself. This false disobedience is why most people in the church are so hard on themselves. This wrong way of disobedience is a waste of time because it’s not God correcting you; you are correcting yourself through your own need to overcome guilt. The truth is that you’re not guilty until the Lord says you’re guilty. Follow Him, and He will let you know when you need to repent. (Philippians 3:15) This is why it is very important to learn God’s voice so that you can know when it’s Him telling you what to do and not yourself.
Now that we know what true disobedience is, we can ask the next question.
What do you do to overcome your disobedience and receive your reward as an overcomer?
The details may be different for each person, and each situation, but the guidelines are the same for everyone. The answer is good instruction. When you disobey God and sin against Him, you will need a way out of sin. That’s where instruction comes in. Instruction is God’s “how-to” to repent from sin. It’s what God uses to guide you away from wrong thinking and wrongdoing.
So what is an instruction?
It’s very similar to a commandment in many ways, but while a commandment is given to teach you what to do, instruction is given to teach you how to do it. Instruction and commandments work very closely together to accomplish the will of God. Sometimes it’s even hard to tell them apart. Commandments turn you to obedience, and instruction teaches you how to walk in what was commanded. You will not be disobedient again when instruction is applied to your life because you know what to do to avoid being disobedient. You see a lot of evidence of this in the proverbs of Solomon, who associated instruction with wisdom, understanding, and the knowledge of God. David also taught us that the Lord uses instruction to teach us “in the way”. Psalms 32:8.
8 I will instruct you and teach you in the way which you should go: I will guide you with mine eye.
You also see Paul use the word instruction in 2 Timothy 3:14-17 to show us that it is a continuation of being taught or trained in the truth. More specifically, he said that the Scriptures instruct us in righteousness. This instruction means discipline or training. The point is that righteousness needs to be taught to us. (Sometimes, when I use scripture references, I will interchange words to make a point of what is being said.) If I interchange a few words in 2 Timothy 3:14-17, it can read like this.
14 Continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how 15 from a child you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise unto salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching (doctrine), for reproof, for correction, and for training (instruction) in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
Good instruction teaches, trains, and guides you right out of disobedience and helps you understand the right way to serve God in obedience to every word He tells you.
Here’s an example
As we continue, make sure to read the last teaching on “How Jesus Taught the Seven Churches”. You can find that here. It will help explain this teaching better, but you don’t have to read it to understand what I’m saying here. Let’s give an example of how this works.
Disobedience can be overcome with good instruction.
Now let’s say that God did talk to you and told you exactly what to do, and you disobeyed Him for some reason or another. What now? This is where the instruction comes in to help you in your disobedience. God is always merciful to forgive, but there will need to be some instruction given to you that will help you leave your state of disobedience and begin to obey what you were commanded. Instruction is the secret to overcoming your sin and obtaining your reward.
For example, let’s say that God gives you a commandment to follow, and you disobey. What are we told to do after we have sinned? Repent. That was easy. But what if you need more? You will need more, or you will guess what you need to repent from. When Jesus taught the seven churches in the book of Revelation, He used five steps to teach them how to repent and overcome their sin and disobedience.
1 Jesus revealed Himself to them.
2 Jesus revealed the good in them (obedience).
3 Jesus revealed the bad in them (disobedience).
4 Jesus instructed them in how to overcome.
5 Jesus promised them rewards for overcoming.
Once again, you can find more on those five steps in the last teaching. In this teaching, we focus specifically on the last three steps to guide you once you are told to repent. The point I will make is that good instruction will be the bridge between your sin and your reward. Your obedience to good instruction will be your repentance. Now let’s look at these three steps.
Step 3 of 5 is to learn what your disobedience is.
If we are told to repent, then we should ask this question. What do I repent from? You would not have questioned yourself about being disobedient if the Lord hadn’t told you that you were in disobedience. That’s why His word is so great in your life. It has many diversities, and one of them is to reveal your sin. Another part of this is when He shows your sin by simply commanding you to repent. If it comes through a commandment, stop what you’re doing and pay attention because a commandment here is meant to point you towards finding the answer to this question. Your sin has to be revealed before you can repent the right way. Just make sure it’s God telling you what to repent from.
Step 4 of 5 is to receive your instruction.
Once you know your disobedience, this instruction helps you overcome your disobedience. This instruction is the bridge from sin to eternal life. The question to ask here is, How do I repent? Another way to ask this question is to say what instruction do I need to change my disobedience to obedience? The focus is not your sin as much as the instruction of what to do. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times, focus on where you’re going and not just on getting away from something. Instruction gives you everything you need to walk in obedience because it sanctifies the Lord. This is faith towards God, which is covered in the principle doctrine of Christ.
Step 5 of 5 is to receive your reward promise for overcoming your disobedience.
This is where prophecy comes into play in your life. A reward is tied to the prophecy that God has given you as a child of God and will tell you what to expect when you overcome and walk in obedience. This leads us to the third question we should ask. What happens when I repent? This is the believer’s question. The believer wants to walk faithfully in the instruction he has received from the Lord. The answer to this question puts the right expectation in you so that while you’re being taught and guided, you know the end of things. Knowing the end helps you not get off course.
Once these things work in your life, you will understand true repentance because you have understood your sin disobedience and acknowledged it. You will turn from your sin disobedience and start walking in obedience. Lastly, you receive your hope reward and walk in it to fulfill it. When these are accomplished, you are an overcomer, a conqueror of your sin disobedience.
In the chart below, you can see how this simple principle worked in the seven churches in the book of Revelation. Two of these churches were not called to repentance from disobedience because they were being tested. Instead, they were instructed to overcome their persecution. We can talk about that in another teaching.
For the sake of space, the chart only shows parts 3-5. This is an excellent exercise to learn how good instruction can overcome your disobedience. As you follow the chart, open your Bible to the seven churches in the book of Revelation chapters 2-3 and write down on a separate piece of paper parts 1-2 for yourself.
Please Note: God is a Spirit. He can work repentance in your life however He chooses to do so. This teaching in step form is simply based on my observation and practice of how He taught me in the seven churches to be an overcomer. This, like all of my teachings, can be based on perception and the way God leads you. With that said, this way is proven and works very well when led by the Spirit.
