27 And he answered, “YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND; AND YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.” 28 And He said to him, “You have answered correctly; DO THIS AND YOU WILL LIVE.” Luke 10:27-28

All the ways to achieve our successes and victories are outlined here if we correctly understand this passage. Success in spirit, mind, and body comes through loving God and our neighbors as ourselves. Loving God is to correctly understand His will and carry out His will with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind. Each day, at each moment, we must discern what God seeks from us and act according to our understanding of His Truth with everything we have. No matter how much we understand through the Bible and sermons, that understanding is useless without action. 

“To diligently obey and carefully do as God commands us today” means knowing what God wants us to do at each moment and obeying His direction in our actions. The one who listens and acts at that moment is the one who lives. If we fail in this, whatever else we do will not matter. Do I do this or not do this? Is this word, action, work, person, or desire something I should or should not follow, have or not have? We must make the right decision according to God’s truth. This is how we live and succeed.

How do we understand God’s direction? Seeking God’s direction begins with understanding His Word. 

1. First, we must discern God’s direction through reading the Bible. Read, contemplate, and seek to understand as you read.
2. Next, we can contemplate and seek to understand through sermons. Genuine sermons are strictly an explanation of something written in the Bible we may not understand from reading. 
3. If we still need help, then we must look at creation, all living beings, animals, and even how farmers work to gain understanding of what we should do as we observe and contemplate. 
4. If we still need more guidance, we must look back at our lives and our experiences. What happened to me in the past when this happened? Use our history to figure out what God wants us to do. 
5. Finally, we must pray and ask for God’s wisdom to help us to understand. If we seek understanding from God after we have tried everything else, God will give us an answer through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit guiding our conscience. 

Make the effort to try to understand. If our motives are genuine, God will recognize our efforts, be happy with us, and will help us. God is not cruel or mean. All our successes and victories are determined by our understanding of God’s direction at each moment we face and being able to act as we are directed. When we do both these things with all our hearts, God takes responsibility for us. 

We must be careful never to seek from God without putting forth our genuine effort. This is disrespectful to God. Telling God what He must do for us without being obedient to His Word is treating God like a slave. To earn his blessing, we must put all our life, purpose, and will into understanding and then obeying His purpose. We must be loyal unto death. We must love God, give God all our hearts, efforts, and lives. 

What is loving God? Loving God is keeping God’s commandments as His Word directs. Jesus said he loves God and that we are to love him by obeying his father’s commandments with all our life. Loving God comes down to two simple steps. First, we must put all our effort into building our understanding of God’s Word to know what God is commanding us to do at each moment in our lives. Second, we must act at that moment according to His commandments no matter what danger we face. Whatever we sacrifice – family, life, health, wealth – is what we must give up to obey God’s commandments. Why? If we obey, God promised us he will take care of all things for us. 

Set your priority on obeying God at each moment in your lives. Daniel continued to pray despite the certainty of being thrown into the lion’s den to his death because he believed in his contract with God. Those who do always succeed. If we do not find and obey God’s direction, we become slaves to the world, whatever we choose to protect and betray God for is what we serve, not God. When we obey God’s commandment, it will seem foolish to the world and even detrimental to our immediate well-being. But in the eternal view, it always leads to greater blessings. Whatever we lose, we will gain more through our steadfast obedience. Believers without actual testing of their faith have no real faith. This sacrifice and suffering is what it is to bear the cross. 

Click for Korean sermon https://soundcloud.com/yhpaik/1980-12-12a