Stuck on Obedience

     Those (few) of you who read this blog are going to believe that I am stuck on the concept of obedience, and perhaps you are right. I am beginning to believe that this is one of most misunderstood yet crucially important things in the Church. So for the foreseeable future, I will be continuing to write (short!) thoughts on obedience as Abba continues to give them to me.
     Today I first want to recommend another book (surprise!) that is one of the best I have seen on obedience. It's an updated version of an old Andrew Murray classic, originally entitled The School of Obedience. The Bethany House version of this book is entitled A Life of Obedience, and this book is destined to be added to my short list of "must read" books. Following are a couple of quotes from it.
     "The beauty of salvation consists of this, that He brings us back to the life of obedience, through which alone the creature can give the Creator the glory due to Him, or receive the glory of which his Creator desires him to partake." (page 11). In an earlier post (October 24), I noted that some believers seem to think that they have been "saved from having to obey" instead of being saved in order to obey. Murray's statement here addresses that myth.
     "The secret of true obedience, I believe, is a clear and close personal relationship with God. All our attempts to achieve full obedience will fail until we have access to His abiding fellowship. It is God's holy presence, consciously abiding with us, that keeps us from disobeying Him....A life of broken and spasmodic fellowship with God must be healed to make way for a full and healthy life of obedience. The secret of true obedience, then, is the return to close and continual fellowship with God." (pages 32-33). I know none of you are surprised that I would quote this one! Through our intimacy with Him, Jesus lives the obedient life out in us. As I have said before, we live from God, not for God.
     Now here are a few random thoughts on obedience that I may or may not elaborate on in the days ahead.

• Obedience is essentially the surrender of the control of your life to another person or persons. That's probably why it's so hard for the children of Adam, eh?
• The obedience God desires flows from our trust in Him and love for Him (see my post for March 19). It is possible, of course, to obey apart from love and trust (fear can motivate us, too), but it is not possible to love and trust someone and not obey them (John 14:15). Think about that one a while!
• Trust (aka "faith") gives birth to more than obedience, but it most certainly must lead to obedience (see the NIV's rendering of Romans 1:5!).
• Perhaps one reason we have such a hard time in our culture with obedience is that our culture is based on individualism and was born in rebellion. Hebrew culture, on the other hand, was community/family oriented and had obedience at its root. Hmmm. Much to ponder with this one.

     Okay, enough for now. I hope to write again later this week to catch up some. I have discovered that I need to write in the middle of the week instead of on Mondays because I travel so much!
     I close with this scripture about Abraham (my paraphrase). "Because He trusted Him, Abraham obeyed when he was called (by God) to leave friends and family behind and go to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not even knowing where he was going!" (Hebrews 11:8).
     Abba, may we trust you more and more because of the continuing revelation of your total trustworthiness, goodness and love! Jesus, live out the life of the Obedient One through us!

Tom, the least of Abba's children.