OUTGROWING OBEDIENCE Obedience is a unique character trait. People train this response into horses, dogs, employees, students, and children using various types of incentives. You may notice I didn’t identify cats. Even if you did train your cat in obedience, compliance will always be because your cat agreed to go along with your ideas for a while. Those well read on the Garfield cartoon series get this. Obedience involves a choice. One’s will is surrendered to do the right thing, hopefully immediately, without any means of coaching or coxing. One’s response generally relieves an anxiety in life and may protect one from raising tension in one’s own life. If one only complies with a superior’s will for a short time their innate nature towards apprehension will become apparent. I remember a discussion with my children years ago. The thought was, how great it is to be a Mom or a Dad because you can do whatever you want and no one tells you that you did something wrong. They saw Mom and Dad as untouchable agents, outside the boundaries of obeying another. I gave my children the assurance that I was under the authority of others; God, government, police, and other church members just to name a few. Let’s imagine a few biblical scenarios about obedience. What if OT Job refused to honor God in the disasters God permitted Satan to assault on him; or if Abraham didn’t listen to God as he raised the sacrificial knife over Isaac; or if Noah refused to finish the Ark? What if Daniel, Boaz, Moses, Elijah, Elisha, or Jeremiah stopped God’s mission for them? Even some NT faithful come to mind. What if Peter and others stopped spreading the Gospel message after their Lord’s death and resurrection and forgot our Lord’s words that a servant is not greater than his master. What if Paul didn’t confess the Lord and turn from persecuting church witnesses; or Timothy, Titus, and other next generation confessors didn’t press on? What if Christ decided, like many contemporary earth dwellers, that God must implement a Plan B because he had a lot of time to think about it and Plan A was no longer reasonable? Christians have the privilege and responsibility to be “obedience” examples before their world for the Gospel of Christ. When God is obeyed at all costs the evidence for fearing God becomes incarnated in living. If selective obedience is rendered, young lives and new believers will surmise that their first fears of God must be wrong and they need to be more relaxed about absolute commands learned in Bible study. Living the “obedience” humility of our Savior makes no claim for one’s position or personage apart from being a vessel fit for God’s use in His plan.
Posted on: Sun, 04 Aug 2013 02:17:20 +0000
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