The kiss of the salt air and breeze on my cheeks. The sound of the water, waves crashing along the shore.
I’m reminded, they can go only as far as the Father commands. “This far and that’s it,” He says. And they obeyed.
If only obedience was that easy for me…
Being that it is relatively early in the new year yet (where has this month gone though?! We are more than half way through it) my morning Bible reading was from Genesis. New year, new attempt at reading through the Bible–but that’s an entirely different topic 🙂
One of the things I love about the Bible is that when we are open to it we discover new things that leap off the page no matter how many times we have read a particular story–at least that’s how it works for me. Today that happened again. A coincidence that it happened to be about obedience when that memory from my day at the beach was still fresh in my mind? I don’t think so! But then again I don’t really believe in coincidence…again, another topic for another day.
“When his brothers were ready to leave, Joseph gave these instructions to his palace manager: ‘Fill each of their sacks with as much grain as they can carry, and put each man’s money back into his sack. Then put my personal silver cup at the top of the youngest brother’s sack, along with the money for his grain.’ So the manager did as Joseph instructed him. The brothers were up at dawn and were sent on their journey with their loaded donkeys. But when they had gone only a short distance and were barely out of the city, Joseph said to his palace manager, ‘Chase after them and stop them. When you catch up with them, ask them, ‘Why have you repaid my kindness with such evil? Why have you stolen my master’s silver cup, which he uses to predict the future?What a wicked thing you have done!’ When the palace manager caught up with the men, he spoke to them as he had been instructed.” Genesis 44:1-6
Did you catch all that? I don’t know about you, but if I was that palace manager I would have thought Joseph lost his mind…put the cup in, chase after them and ask why they stole it (even though the manager clearly knew it wasn’t stolen). I would have wondered, I likely would have questioned, if not aloud, most definitely within. And maybe he did, I don’t know it doesn’t tell us. But what it does tell us is what jumped off the page at me. “When the palace manager caught up with the men, he spoke to them as he had been instructed.“
Obedience. Even when it didn’t make sense.
If Joseph, a mere man, could command such respect that his manager was willing to obey despite how crazy it all appeared why do I struggle to obey God?!
God! The one who knows my future, who gives me every breath I take!
And so my wrestling began.
There is no easy answer to my question. Or maybe there is. Maybe it is simply lack of faith. Lack of trust. Lack of confidence in the very fact and truth that God is love and yes, He allows bad things to happen, but never just to be mean. Always there will be a reason even if I can’t see it, even if my entire circumstances make no sense whatsoever.
When I hear the word obedience, often it triggers a negative connotation. “Obey or else!” Alluding to conditional love, performance based attainment.
And that right there is the struggle. It isn’t a struggle of obedience per se, it’s believing a lie instead of the truth. The truth that God is good. God loves me, period. God is bigger than my circumstances. God can take the mess, the heartache of my life and make something good out of it….and just because it isn’t working out the way I think it should doesn’t mean it isn’t working out. It is. In God’s way and His timing. Which is always better than my own.
Sure, I like everybody else, would like life to be easy. To go the way I want it to go. To always have enough. But when it doesn’t (we do after all live in a broken world, a world of imperfection), when none of it makes sense, will I still obey?
When that person says the hurtful things, spews judgement on me or my family, will I forgive (obedience) or retaliate, seek revenge (not what God asks of me therefore disobedience). When the pressures of life and circumstances, whether those circumstances are time, people or money related weigh me down will I give it to God, trust Him (obedience) or worry, fret and try to figure things out myself (disobedience). When I get that prompting within to step out of my comfort zone, to stop a stranger and ask him if he knows Jesus (yes that really happened and let me tell you I didn’t like it!) will I obey? Or will I walk away from the opportunity to make a difference in someone else’s eternity by choosing disobedience?
Oh, to be like Joseph’s palace manager and live life “as I’m instructed.” The bonus for me and you that the palace manager didn’t have–God doesn’t leave us to live life out of our own strength. He doesn’t require obedience out of randomness. He has given us His Holy Spirit. It’s in His very grace and strength we are able to obey. And anything He asks of us is always for a very good reason. Never just randomly. We just don’t always know the why because we can’t see the bigger picture, the connections that lead to other connections.
Each time we submit our fleshly desire of doing things our own way, choosing instead to obey God we are becoming more like Jesus. And in so doing that, we become brighter lights in a often dark world. But the danger (at least for me) is to make this a “religious” thing by attempting it in my own strength. How easy it is to default to that. But that turns it back into the performance based, have to do this to please God attitude and that is so not the truth!
As I wrote in Losing Lance: One Life Matters “Grace received. If you have ever experienced it, you know just how beautiful it is.”
Thank you God for Your grace to walk in obedience, thank You that You don’t require me to do this in my own feeble strength.
So as I wrestled with all of this today, talking it over with God, digging to the root of it all I decided to actually look up the definition of obedience–remember to me it had bad connotation (unless of course it was me asking something of my kids haha). And here is how dictionary.com defines it: Obedience–the state or quality of being obedient (ok that was a no brainer!) the act or practice of…submissive compliance. Submissive compliance? So me being me looked up compliance. Compliance–the act of yielding: cooperation.
Now how is that negative?
Obedience. It’s not the list of rules I need to check off that my mind tried to tell me it was. It is simply yielding to God. Cooperating with Him. And if I truly believe all that I say I do about Him, would that even be difficult?
I know this is not a one time lesson for me. This will be a life long process. But today I am thankful for the insights. The encouragement. The answers my wrestling and discussion with God brought about.
And I’m even more thankful for the the peace obedience brings. That young man I was nudged to ask if he knew Jesus–we had a wonderful conversation. And if it hadn’t turned out so well, really, what would it have cost me? Embarrassment in front of a stranger–I’ve lived through far worse.
And just when I thought all that was enough, looking down on the sidewalk as I walked back from the beach was a heart-shaped rock. I smiled and said “thank you Jesus, and Lance for sending the love”.
Obedience. May I learn from the waves along the shore–it’s really a beautiful thing!
As a little bonus for making it all the way to the end of this post enjoy one of my favourite songs 🙂
The lyrics went through my mind as I felt that breeze on my cheeks and heard those waves along the shore….