Single Minded Obedience
The Christian
life sounds easy enough, it ultimately comes down to two choice –
obey or disobey. In everything we do, we choose whether to obey
what God has directed us or to disobey. There is not a time when we
disobeyed that we didn’t have the option to obey.
Yet we are
trapped by the reality that we are still sinful, fleshly creatures.
Even with the help of the Holy Spirit we still choose to disobey far
too often. Not only do we choose to disobey, we choose to disobey
repeatedly in the same areas whether they be anger, lust, gossip,
selfishness, etc.
Consider the
rich young ruler in Mark 10:17-23. This man wanted to follow Jesus
just as we do. But when Jesus told him what he had to do, he was
unwilling to do it. It wasn’t because he was openly defiant of what
Jesus asked him to do. When we sin, it is not in open defiance of
what God says to do. When we get angry, we don’t say to ourselves,
“I know I should be loving but I believe that anger is better than
God’s way.” Instead we find ways to justify our actions.
We only know
that the rich young ruler went away sad, but how might he have
justified keeping his wealth to himself?
When Jesus gives
us a commandment, we are to obey. We aren’t to make excuses for why
we didn’t follow and our excuses aren’t going to hold up no matter
how good they sound. Consider a simple command from Matthew
6:25-34. We are told not to worry - specifically in this case we
are not to worry about money. Yet, what is the one issue that
couples argue about more than anything else? Why do we squirrel
away our nest eggs and throw thousands of dollars into retirement
funds? Why is it when a health problem occurs, our first
inclination is to worry? Is our faith so small that we don’t
believe God has control of everything from our finances to our
health?
(Note: this
isn’t to say that saving money is bad or that we won’t have
financial hardships particularly if we are foolish with the
resources God gives us.)
We need to work
on the idea of single minded obedience. It’s not an easy thing or
we’d be doing much better with it without a reminder. God gave us
commands for a reason. Things he told us to do are for a good
reason and are not just arbitrary decisions handed down from on
high. Some things may not even make much sense but that doesn’t
mean they aren’t given for a good reason. In the Old Testament, the
people were not to eat meat with blood in it. There were spiritual
reasons behind this, but as we understand bacteria today, we know
there are physical reasons for it as well.
God commands
don’t have to make sense to us although most of them we should see
an obvious benefit from. In the case of worrying, Jesus so much as
tells us that there is no benefit to worrying, so stop doing it.
Some people can
claim ignorance to God’s commands and thus cannot follow His
commands because of a lack of knowledge. These people must become
diligent in studying so that they know God’s Word. Claiming you
didn’t know the law won’t set you free in court and it won’t work as
an excuse before God. Those who know God’s law have no reason not
to follow it and should focus on following it with all their heart.
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