Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Obey = Grow

What do you hear when you hear the term obey? In reference to parents, children, spouses, friends, employers that term obey has almost become a four letter word - we are encouraged to challenge authority at every turn - we are instructed from an early age that independence is vital to our development as human beings and if we simply obey we will be swallowed up by the world and lose our individuality.

I would argue the opposite is true - when we look at obedience not as a punishment, not as a negative, not as something looking to restrict our freedoms - but as a blessing, an assist, as something looking to set us free from our bondage and shackles that we become even more unique even more of an individual than we could ever have become on our own - we become part of the body of Christ and in Christ we each have our own unique function or purpose that we are called to (1 Corinthians 12:12-14)

"Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by[c] one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many."

How is this possible? How is it possible when we surrender our will, submit to His leading that we become more free than before?

There are many  passages throughout the Bible that speak towards "obedience" - the terms obey, obedience, and obedient are used 257 times in various contexts throughout the Old and New Testaments and those are just the times that it is explicitly taught it is implicitly taught far more times through passages such as John 14:15 - "If you love me, keep my commands." Jesus is instructing us that if we love him we will "keep" or obey his teachings. The big struggle comes in when we are faced with the quandary of  do we truly take God's instruction, his advice, or are we simply paying lip service to him?  ― C.S. Lewis puts it this way:

“[To have Faith in Christ] means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.”

Have you really handed yourself over to God today? Are striving to be obedient in all his ways? Or are you simply paying lip service to God? 1 Samuel 15:22  says

“Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices
    as much as in obeying the Lord?
To obey is better than sacrifice,
    and to heed is better than the fat of rams."

We may not have to sacrifice a ram today but we are still called to obedience - and as a part of that obedience we are called to sacrifice our own plans and desires and submit to the Word of God. Sacrifice is a must when it comes to obedience -

Christ obeyed the Father in laying down his life for us (Luke 22:42), in sacrificing Himself that we might have access to eternal life - John writes in 1 John 3:16

"This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters."

The act of obedience here is not necessarily that we are laying down our lives in physical death but that we put ourselves, our wants and desires, our ambitions down at the foot of the cross and walk with Christ, carry our cross (Luke 9:23)
"Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me."

Will you be obedient today?