When it comes to our walk with Christ, the Bible shows us there is a crucial difference between a spark and a torch, which we can see when we examine the lives of Saul and David. Saul had amazing experiences with God, moments that ignited in him a great zeal and provoked him to action. “Then the Spirit of God came powerfully upon Saul, and he became very angry.
The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.
Great peace have those who love your law; nothing can make them stumble.
And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us.
Moses met with God, often in dramatic fashion; the Word tells us that “the Angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush’” (Exodus 3:2). At that time God called Moses to lead the children of Israel out of the bondage of Egypt and he had to upend his life to follow the leading of the Lord. “So Moses went and returned to Jethro his father-in-law, and said to him, ‘Please let me go and return to my brethren who are in Egypt’ … And Jethro said to Moses, ‘Go in peace’” (Exodus 4:18-19).
But he said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!”
But this command I gave them: “Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people. And walk in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you.”
What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.
In his book A View from the Zoo, Gary Richmond reminisced about how the most difficult aspect of his job as a zookeeper was often the people at the zoo, not the animals. He told the story of an elderly visitor who, in his words, “created more bedlam than any single visitor in the zoo’s history.”
Love, fear, obedience — when it comes to walking with God, they are inseparable because you cannot practice one without the other two.