This post will not be very long. Not because I couldn’t say a lot, but because I shouldn’t say a lot. One of the things I try to avoid is complicating things that are not complicated.
What is the process of obedience? Here it is:
As Christians, we are mindful of the fact that the life we live will not be the end of our existence.
The great Roman General Maximus Decimus Meridius, is credited with saying, “What we do in life, echos in eternity.” Yes, this is a fictional tale, and yes the context was that of fictional war. But the idea is still interesting and worthy of consideration.
As Christians, we are mindful of the fact that the life we live will not be the end of our existence. We have been born again to a living hope. We have been gifted with eternal life because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. And when our time comes for us to pass through death’s door, we will join the cloud of witnesses that the writer of Hebrews spoke of (Hebrews 12:1).
Most people know that Hebrews 11 is the “Hall of Fame of Faith” in the Bible. It is where we see a line of faith woven through the lives of some of the most recognizable names in the scriptures. But, many of us read these names and we have a detached perspective on them. What we should do, as best we can, is ourselves as having taken our place in the line of faith.
When we confessed our trust in Jesus, we have joined in the cloud of witness to the glory of God. It may be difficult for us to accept that we can take our place with those named, but we can. If we have believed in God’s word, trusted in God’s promises, and committed to a life of obedience to God’s commands, we too are a people of faith like those named. We are their legacy. Therefore, we must do our part to stay faithful, leaving a legacy of our own. Obedience is the key to seeing this happen.
Leave a legacy of faith by committing to a life of obedience.
Obedience is a costly choice. It takes courage and grit to continue to do what we have been tasked with. To diminish the cost of obedience would be to commit against ourselves an injustice. We would be undercutting and devaluing our own efforts. Obedience is difficult at times.
There will also be times when our obedience will come at a higher price than we anticipated. We will be challenged to the point of questioning our resolve. I think we don’t want to admit it, but there will be tears in our obedience. Tears because of our own failings. And tears when we see the failures of others.
What I want to say is that we should not be afraid of those tears. They are evidence of a transformed heart, whether in repentance or compassion. Tears are a salve to the soul and heart. When the time comes it’s best to just let them flow.
When we look at obedience as a chore we can’t see how it produces in us the very things we want to see.
As the years continue to march, I find myself reflecting more. Looking back over my life and wanting to make better decisions today than I did yesterday. I want to become a better person. But this process is complicated by my tendency to shy away from my mistakes. I don’t know too many people that find self-reflection easy to do. It is hard work.
With this in mind, I have started the realized of late, that part of the reason I struggle with obedience is that I tend to see it as restrictive and burdensome. When we look at obedience as a chore we can’t see how it produces in us the very things we want to see. Why do I say this? As a Christian, I want to live a life that is pleasing to God, but if I try to do that according to what I think is right, I will definitely get it wrong.
The only person in the entire universe that knows what will please God is God. God has spoken, and his desires for the world have been written down in the Scriptures. If we want to know what pleases him, then we have to conform our worldview and our life choices to what God has revealed. There is no way around this.
Obedience to God’s will (as it is contained in the Scripture) is the only way to please God. This is why I say that there is a sense of wonder in obedience. We keep wondering if God will be pleased with our obedience, and every time he is, we just keep wondering. Rather than staying skeptical, we should take God at his word. We should accept that obedience is pleasing to God and get on with living in obedience.
Obedience, when we speak of it in reference to God, is an act of daring.
We don’t use the word “daring” very often anymore. But it is an interesting word. Merriam-Webster defines it this way: “venturesomely bold in action or thought.”
Obedience, when we speak of it in reference to God, is an act of daring. It is daring to read the Scriptures and submit to its teaching. It is daring to live in community with other believers and seek to walk in peace and holiness. It is daring to forsake your own desires for the sake of those whom God has called you to serve.
When I think about obedience it really is bold action. It takes courage to fight for consistency. It takes the strength of will to see the difficult choices in front of you and embrace the consequences of doing the right thing.
The more I explore this idea of obedience, the more I realized how little I understood the implications of it. It takes time to work through our fear and our anxieties. It takes time to understand the value of submission to God’s will. It takes time because we are limited in our ability to see every aspect of the road in front of us. But, we can see the road. We can know that we are on the right path. The question we all have to face is this: will we give ourselves the freedom to enjoy the journey? Even with the potholes and obstacles we will encounter along the way?
I hope you will.
This is one of my favorite worship songs. Most people are familiar with the chorus, but the entire song is powerful and beautiful.
Obedience becomes easier AND harder the longer we commit to it.
We have addressed various challenges and difficulties with obedience over the last week. Today I want to talk about one of the most important aspects of living an obedient life. That attribute is endurance.
We may not always think of endurance as being related to obedience. I will admit I did not until recently. What I have realized is that obedience becomes easier AND harder the longer we commit to it. I want to speak to both of these.
I want to touch on the issue of obedience becoming harder first. The reason is that I want to expose something I have encountered in my own faith journey. As I have tried to become more intentional in my obedience, and by this I mean more aware of it (my tendency has usually been to behavior compliance, which I think is quite normal in the church of the twenty-first century), I have realized that what I thought made obedience difficult was not the command I was confronted with.
What makes obedience hard is the separation between our intentional awareness and our move toward passive compliance. Obedience, in order to be properly called obedience, must be active and something we conscientiously engage in. When we are intentional we are taking thoughts captive; we are seeing the goodness of God around us; we are not letting life happen to us, but we are actually living the life Christ secured for us on the cross.
On the other side, the longer we endure it becomes easier because we see God’s faithfulness in sustaining us. We become witnesses to how the power of sin has been broken and how we can see victory when we trust in the Lord’s wisdom. Obedience stops being a burden and becomes one of our great delights.
To see obedience as a joy that pleases our Heavenly Father and brings satisfaction to our souls comes when we persevere. Through the difficulties and the obstacles, we endure because we have become convinced that our obedience is both what God requires, but also what God desires. And because he desires it we please him when we obey.
I want to encourage you to strive for obedience. You will find more joy on the other side than you thought possible.
To live out our faith each and every day is an act of obedience…
After the events of Sept. 11, 2001, there were innumerable acts of heroism, as first responders and average citizens mustered their collective wills to find a way forward. The sheer acts of selfless service and courage it took to see through the wreckage and loss of life to see a future that was more hopeful than hateful and gave those of us looking on from thousands of miles away a glimpse of what could be after the tragedy.
Hours after the smoking towers fell, we began to hear stories of brave souls climbing the stairs in search of those who may have been trapped. They risked life and limb in the hopes of bringing another soul to safety. For many, it would be their last act of obedience in this world. I imagine that many wondered if they would make it out as they climbed. And yet they climbed.
One of the stories I remember most vividly was from (if memory serves me) a retired Battalion Chief of the NY Fire Department. He gave an interview to a magazine where he shared about the commitment of the brave men and women of the department to serve their city and each other. He offered a quotation of a famous Fire Chief named Edward F. Croker. He paraphrased the lines in the interview, but I was able to find what I believe to be a fuller accounting, I offer it here in full.
“Firemen are going to get killed. When they join the department they face that fact. When a man becomes a fireman his greatest act of bravery has been accomplished. What he does after that is all in the line of work. They were not thinking of getting killed when they went where death lurked. They went there to put the fire out, and got killed. Firefighters do not regard themselves as heroes because they do what the business requires.” – Edward Croker, February 1908 (emphasis added) [Source]
The highlighted portion is what I remember from the Battalion Chief. There was something about it that spoke to me given the severity and burden of the task after 9/11. But in this sentiment, I find a corollary idea in the Christian journey.
As Christians, the only sacrifice we make is to forsake our own lives for the cause of Christ. The apostle Paul said, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20 ESV). This is the full extent of what it means to deny ourselves and take up our crosses and following Jesus (Matthew 16:24).
To live out our faith each and every day is an act of obedience because the sacrifice has already taken place when we said “yes” to Jesus. Everything else we do because we recognize and accept it as being “in the line of work.”
Obedience is simple, but it is rarely easy.
I want to make sure that I make this distinction right from the beginning. To say something is simple does not mean it is easy. Obedience is simple, but it is rarely easy.
As we have seen over the last couple of days, the call and difficulty of obedience are related to the problem we have to submit to what we have been told to do by God. The more we seek to know and do God’s will, the greater our chance of confronting the greatest obstacle of our faith: We do not want to do things God’s way. We wonder quietly (and sometimes openly) if God really wanted to he could make it easier for us to obey.
Let me answer this simply: NO! God will not make it easier.
Obedience will always be a challenge because it will always ask us to actions that challenge our comfort. I don’t know why we want to make obedience to God easy. It is not easy. It’s not supposed to be because God is working to remove the vestiges of sin from our lives. That means that until all God sees is Christ in us, there is a continued need for obedience.
The miracle is that God has not left us powerless. When Jesus ascended into heaven, he promised to send another. One who would be both our comforter and our source of strength. When I say this I mean two specific things. First, the Holy Spirit comforts us not in our sinning. No, the Spirit of God comforts us by reminding us that in spite of our sin, we have been forgiven; that in spite of our tendency toward failure, Christ’s success on the cross cannot be revoked or rescinded.
Second, the Holy Spirit is our strength. What I mean by this is that we are not going to win the battle for obedience against sin in our own ability. It is divine enablement that makes the life of a born-again believer of Jesus possible to live until we see Jesus face-to-face. The Holy Spirit pokes and prods our conscience, letting us know we are moving away from God’s will and purpose. When we heed this prompting we are drawn away from danger and reset on our journey.
Obedience is hard, but not because God has made it hard. It is hard because we make it hard. When we fail to obey, it is not an indictment on God, but on us. We have failed to obey because we found something of lesser value than God more worthy of our time and efforts.
Obedience is simple. We just want to make it complicated. And this is what makes it hard.
The soldier does not need to know why the given task is important. The soldier is only responsible to doing everything within their power to see it done.
One of my favorite stories in the entire Bible tells about a soldier who came asking Jesus to heal one of his servants. It is found in the seventh chapter of Luke’s Gospel. What is interesting to me is how the Centurion captures in just a few words the essence of faithful obedience. It is one of the most important events in Jesus’ earthly ministry because of how Jesus characterizes the Centurion’s understanding of faith and obedience.
6 And Jesus went with them. When he was not far from the house, the centurion sent friends, saying to him, “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof. 7 Therefore I did not presume to come to you. But say the word, and let my servant be healed. 8 For I too am a man set under authority, with soldiers under me: and I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes; and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” 9 When Jesus heard these things, he marveled at him, and turning to the crowd that followed him, said, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.” (Luke 7:6-9 ESV)
The Centurion, as a soldier, had been trained to follow orders. To hear the commands given by his superiors in the chain of command and to follow them. He had also been trained to give orders and expect them to be obeyed. There are several implicit realities here.
The Centurion was speaking in military terms. He was making a reference to the fact that in the same that he was a soldier who would give and take orders and expect them to be done, he expected Jesus’s words to have the same power over disease! Jesus was a man both under and with authority. And Jesus responds to this by describing a soldiers obedience to commands and faith. It truly is an amazing story.
What makes this exchange even more impressive is that it is, as far as I can remember, the only place where Jesus commends the faith of a Gentile as being greater than all those who were a part of Israel. This is high praise indeed for this man.
What this means is that God is looking for a people who learn and know how to obey. In our obedience there is power because it is one of the simplest and greatest evidences of our faith. Without obedience, any discussion of faith is mere lip service.
