Three things I read today in my study:
- You cannot stay where you are and go with God at the same time.
- Obedience is costly to you and those around you.
- Obedience requires total dependence on God to work through you.
I have been reflecting alot on the call of Jesus to His disciples (Luke 10). It was a heavy, hard, dirty and often crazy cost for those people who shared the hope of Jesus to their world – and it often required complete surrender. I've been reading some Racer's blogs about the difficulties of sickness, travel issues, and lack of sleep, hunger, limited food… and thinking about how directly these experiences match those first disciples.
But the cool thing is; those disciples brought incredible peace, healed the sick, fought injustice, and even broke chains of physical and spiritual oppression. The cost of obedience was great, but the reward for that obedience was so much greater.
Could this be your year of risk? – adventure, and release – for the sake of the better life that Jesus speaks of? What would it take for you to face your fears? To step into the chaos?
One of my favorite old hymns is called, "Trust and Obey," and the last verse and refrain say:
Then in fellowship sweet
we will sit at His feet
Or we'll walk by His side in the way;
What He says we will do,
Where He sends we will go;
Never fear, only trust and obey.Trust and obey,
for there's no other way
To be happy in Jesus,
But to trust and obey.
