Obedience

Obedience. If ever there was a loaded word, obedience would be it. I’m not a parent, but I have been a child [ :-) ] and I know that parents want their children to obey. But, more importantly, they want their children to choose to obey.   And, most importantly, parents want their children to choose to obey when it’s not the easy choice.  Choosing to obey when the wants of the parent and child are in line is easy. Choosing to obey when there is no way out and obeying is the only choice; that’s also easy. Making the difficult decision to obey is a true indication of a child’s maturity, faith, and trust in the parent.

You may already see where I’m going with this, but this is no different for Christians and their obedience to God. We often congratulate ourselves when we obey God without breaking a sweat- when our obedience results in something that falls in line with our own wants and desires.  This isn’t the obedience of a mature child of Christ- it’s easy; it requires no great show of trust or faith. Likewise, when our worlds are falling apart and we know of no other way to go but that which God directs us… this isn’t true obedience either.

Now we get to the hard part.  What if God wants me to do something outside of my comfort zone, or is my greatest fear, or is at a time when I’d really rather be doing something else… what then?
I’ll give you an example from my own life where I'm struggling: I want to get married and have children.  When I was a little girl, I thought I would have these things before I was 30. Well, I'm going to be 30 in two weeks and I'm fairly confident neither of those things is going to happen before then. But what if God doesn’t have marriage or children in my plan, or has other plans for me right now?  I have an incredibly hard time reconciling that God may not want something for me that is such a deep desire of my heart, and I tend to seek what I want even when the Lord has let me know that the time is not right.  I fear the failure of never getting married and never having children. But God doesn’t see it that way- my failure would be in being disobedient to His plan for my life.  But it doesn’t seem logical to me that I could want something out of life that would be in direct opposition to what He wants for my life. After all, it says in the Word:

Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart. 

Psalm 37:4.

I think the problem is we focus on the second half of that verse- the desires of my heart, and not on the first part.  I know I do. My prayers are embarrassingly often filled with laundry lists of the things I would like from the Him, and far less are devoted to seeking the Lord.  Or, perhaps worse, contain bargains- if I promise to do this, then I would like that in return.  This is not obedience. I’m like the kid that promises to clean her room, but only if you give me a dollar first. (Oh my…am I really trying to BRIBE the Lord??)

I guess you could say that obedience has never been my strong suit.  I need to maintain control; I need to know why; I need to get something out of the effort I put in. None of which make for a mature, obedient Christian. The Lord and I have been working on this one a lot lately.  He’s been teaching me that I am going to be put in situations in which I have very little, if any, control, and in situations in which I may never know the reason or the outcome of His prompting.  He’s also been directing me to step outside my comfort zone and share- His wisdom and my shortcomings.   So here we are.  I’m pretty certain I’ve only begun to scratch the surface of my education into what constitutes a mature Christian.

When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things.

Mark 6:34

One thing I know for sure: the moment you choose to obey God, He can work miracles in your life.  But if this is true, why do we fear true obedience?

xo, april