At the Vineyard conference last week one of the speakers talked about the story of David Yonggi Cho the pastor of the largest church in the world, over 1 million in South Korea. I read about that story many years ago. Someone asked him how he became so successful. His answer was simply ‘I Pray and obey.’ Profound and powerful. Prayer is huge thing but it has to be coupled with obedience because obedience is a huge thing to God. We can pray as much as we like but somewhere along the line we have to obey what God is showing and telling us in prayer. Interestingly there is no word obey in Hebrew. Shema is translated hear. Faith and obedience is one action. Faith has to be proven by your obedience. So obedience has a clear sense of how one responds to the word of God in faith. To respond with other than obedience demonstrates a failure to have heard and is tantamount to unbelief. (The mystery of Romans by Mark Nanos) What a challenge to our Western thinking where we think obedience is an optional extra. So when we come and pray have to be determined to obey when he speaks and reveals things to us.
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