Choosing God's Authority (4): Obeying God even when you don't want to.


Sometimes there’s things you don’t want to do even when you know it is the right thing to do. Your heart just doesn’t want to. If we spent our lives following what our heart wants we’d end up in a deceptively wicked place because the way of the heart is deceptively wicked. We’d be swaying back and forth and wouldn’t go forward in our journey.

I used to argue with my mum about doing the right thing. I had the epitome of the classic rebellious teenager attitude. I argued that I didn’t want to be fake so I should be behaving on the outside as I feel on the inside. She said I should behave correctly on the outside even if I didn’t want to on the inside, because atleast half of me was doing what was right. I thought it was ridiculous! The hypocrisy! But as I grew up I realised that sometimes you just have to do the right thing even when there’s nothing in you that wants to. That’s what they called obedience.

 (Disclaimer: obviously there are exceptions to this and we need to be checking everything against scripture instead of blindly following everything but more than the rules its the heart posture God talks to us about with words like obedience)

Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. - Psalm 119:105
When you read the word of God you learn more about the character of God and the Holy Spirit speaks to you through this knowledge of God’s character in every situation, guiding you in the right way. His word becomes a lamp unto your feet and a light unto your path. It’s called the straight and narrow road for a reason. Because there aren’t a million options you can take to go the right way, you can’t turn this way and that and bend the rules to get to where you want to go. You’ve got to walk through a straight road, following it despite opposition from your own body and the works of the devil around you. 

This isn’t at all a self sufficient reliance on your works to get to God. 
I used to think it was. No. It’s you loving God, trusting him (because that is surest sign of love) and obeying him (because that is the surest sign of trust). Not because you want to look better in the eyes of others but because you love God; the God that died for you and gave himself up for you. It’s the intent that I’d been missing. I thought my mum wanted me to appear good because other people would think I was good and in turn see her as a good parent. Maybe that was part of it. But she knew I wouldn’t always understand why, and I needed to get to a place where I could obey God even when I didn’t understand everything about him. This is also acknowledging that apart from him I wouldn't even have the will to obey him, it's all about him.

Today, I know who God is. 
Not all of him of course, a finite mind can only understand so much of an infinite God. I know that this whole thing, this life and otherwise, it really is all about him. I also know my God is good and God is great and God is true. I know God is love, he is more stern and splendid than mere kindness (1) but he is kind too, the kindest. I know he gives us free will and hopes that we will believe him. God does not change, despite our feelings or our fortune. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. 

Knowing this character of God means I also know I want to serve him, I want to follow him. This is in-spite of not understanding everything and not wanting to do everything he says we should do. I want to obey him. I want to want to do what he wants me to do. I want my heart to be inclined towards God rather than toward it’s natural inclination in the flesh.

I pray for grace to be so full of love for God, that when I know what I have to do I can put aside my feelings of discomfort and fear and do what God requires of me, what God has commanded of me. To reasonably and logically look at his word and follow it, no matter what, be lead by the Holy Spirit and not my own heart. 

 Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed; for the LORD thy God is with thee withersoever thou goest. - Joshua 1:9

 - evieroo

 (1) C.S. Lewis

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