obedience. not really something my age group has grasped well. actions often fueled by defiance- backed up by the excuse of “independence.”
here on the field we are required to live by a covenant from the time we are accepted until the time we go home. this covenant is a cluster of what many think of as rules. it’s something many of us yell when people aren’t living it out – most of the time in a way that is not honoring to it. this covenant is more than that. our squad leader pointed out to us that when we are in close relation with christ the things on the covenant should flow anyways out of our love for our creator and out of respect for his creation. these past five months have taught me to lay down my desires and seek.
this has meant i have to do things most of the time i don’t want to fleshly do but out of obedience i have done- attitude changes have occurred and doing things out of my genuine love for christ has shaped that discipline of obedience to now a desire to follow. maybe aims main goal for this whole thing was that as we learned to be obedient to them we would ultimately learn to be obedient to what the lord calls us to do.
in john 14:3 jesus says : “anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.”
if we truly love our father then we are called to obey all the things he commands of us. with that obedience to him we are often called to die to our own desires and obey other people or organizations for a season or a few. how cool is it that he entrusts us with loving his lambs with that respect though?
(sorry becky-jo and mj i wish i grasped this for y’alls sake about 18 years earlier)
in deutoronomy he literally gives us this end promise/reward and reiterates it so many times.
“walk in obedience to ALL that the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live and prosper and prolong your days in the land that you will possess.” deut 5:33
and then “if you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully follow ALL his commands I give you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations on earth.” deut 28:1
promises of actually living THROUGH christ not just of the world & prosper, prolong and set HIGH !! all by obedience.
“for just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.” romans 5:19
jesus hours before he was to be crucified cried out to God if there was anyway he could get out of this. he knew the end result was victory but still being fully human just wanted to see if there was a way out. when there wasn’t, he still obeyed. the disobedience of adam- the start of all humanity affected our entire earth. sin has been a chain reaction so many times in our history. a domino affect one may say, but one man’s obedience literally saved all of our booties. literally.
think about it. the father asks things of us all the time- every day. how can you be stepping into obedience? wether it’s to your heavenly father or your earthly father or your boss- it’s merely about humility. putting them above our fleshly corrupted thoughts filled with independence and often angst. build each other up with obedience as an act of love. super christianese but it’s dying to ourselves season okurr
