We continue this week looking at words we need to act on if we are going to grow closer to God. This week, the letter is “O” and the word I want to talk about is the word “obedience”. I guess if there is one thing we need to make sure we practice in our walk with God it’s obedience. It is in practicing this word that we understand where we are in our relationship with God. We are His children and we are His followers. He is the one who leads us and guides us, not the other way around.

Everyone reading this probably knows the story of Moses’ reluctant obedience to God in Exodus 3. His agreement to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt is the story we know. However, within that story are times when Moses needed to practice obedience on a smaller scale. For example, when Moses approached the burning bush, God told him to take off his sandals because he was on holy ground. Moses did. When speaking of leading the people, God told him Aaron would go with him and Moses agreed. These aren’t big obedience’s, but they are a part of the bigger picture of obedience. In order to obey God in big things, we need to obey God in smaller things.

Maybe God is speaking to you about encouraging someone. Maybe God is speaking to you about doing something for the church. Maybe God is speaking to you about singing in the choir or teaching Sunday school. Maybe God is wanting you to do something that does not seem that big, but He is still wanting you to do it. Obedience is always something that grows our relationship with God.

Why is obeying God so hard? I believe it is because we don’t want to be told what to do. It’s hard for us to have someone say to us “do this” or “do that”, without it causing a negative feeling to swell up inside of us. But don’t we do this every day in our jobs? If you have a job, you probably have a boss who tells you what to do each day. If you are married, there are probably times in your relationship when your spouse needs to tell you what you need to do that day. We all have times when someone, or some people, need to tell us what to do, and that may be part of the problem. I believe, when we are not working, we want to have “our” time. In other words, we want to have a time when we do what we want to do. No one telling us what to do.

That is fine as long as we understand we need to be obedient to Christ in everything we do. There is no time card, there are no certain work hours. Being obedient to Christ is a 24 hour/7 day a week life of living. For some, if not most, that is hard to understand and even harder to practice. In our relationship with God, “me” time should always be seen as “we” time. God is always with us and He may want us to do something when we have not scheduled it. We must be willing to be obedient, if we want to grow in Christ. Until next week…

Peace and Blessings,

Johnny