Speaker: Darlene Sala | Series: Encouraging Words | I recently attended a conference where one of the speakers asked an interesting question. This is it: “Which are you more afraid of—breaking God’s commandments or breaking His heart?” That hit home with me. Most of us know what God’s commandments are—we know that God wants us to do right and reject wrong.

But even beyond obedience, God wants an intimate relationship with us. I see such a need to obey God because we love Him, not just because He said do this or don’t do that—a need to obey God because we don’t want to do anything that would bring heartache to our loving Heavenly Father.

Loving obedience is needed in five areas of our lives: our mind, will, emotions, body and time. Now, I can pretty well guarantee that if you’re alive and breathing, you struggle with one or more of those five areas. I struggle with lovingly obeying God when it comes to physical exercise—I don’t want to do it. I also struggle with wanting to play when I should work—and most of all, I struggle when I need to confront someone about an issue and I don’t want to.

But my friend struggles with her mind and emotions. She has a fear—really a phobia—of serious illness. She can convince herself that she has the symptoms of nearly every serious illness she hears about. She has to lovingly obey God by focusing her thoughts on God’s promises to care for her and then rejecting her fears.

I want to challenge you today is to listen, to be sensitive to God’s voice, and then lovingly obey Him—not because He’s going to punish you if you don’t, but because you love Him so much you don’t want to break His heart. That’s the kind of relationship God wants with you. John said, “We love him, because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19, KJV). What a motivation for us to lovingly obey!