{"id":5906,"date":"2012-07-26T14:48:14","date_gmt":"2012-07-26T14:48:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/?p=5906"},"modified":"2012-07-26T14:48:14","modified_gmt":"2012-07-26T14:48:14","slug":"obliged-or-committed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/?p=5906","title":{"rendered":"Obliged or Committed?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Applying human standards of behavior to God’s ways is dangerous, but I do think I have an analogy that might work. \u00a0I had an interesting conversation early this morning with two photographer friends about the level of a photographers skill being directly proportional to his or her commitment to the craft! \u00a0When you get married in a traditional ceremony you pledge your commitment to your partner. \u00a0Under your pledge you are “obligated”, but if there is not a desire to keep that commitment it will be of very little value. Our relationship with God is the same, it is only our deep desire to keep our commitments that have lasting value. \u00a0When we are obliged we may develop the attitude that we are being forced, almost against our will, to a behavior, not of our choosing. \u00a0Commitment is when we want deeply to “stay the course”. \u00a0In my own marriage, I’m not obligated to love and honor my wife, it is my hearts desire. \u00a0Much of the credit for that goes to her, she is the kind of wife, mother, grandmother, friend, and love that makes it impossible for me to feel otherwise. \u00a0So it should be in our relationship with our Heavenly Father! \u00a0The love that He show us when he sacrificed His Only Son for us, makes it impossible to have any other kind of relationship with Him.<\/p>\n

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My desire is to keep my commitment to Him fresh and alive. \u00a0When you consider all He has done for us, that’s not hard to do.<\/p>\n

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the pilgrim<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Applying human standards of behavior to God’s ways is dangerous, but I do think I have an analogy that might work. \u00a0I had an interesting conversation early this morning with two photographer friends about the level of a photographers skill being directly proportional to his or her commitment to the craft! \u00a0When you get married […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chronicles"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5906"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5908,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5906\/revisions\/5908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}