A Man of Obedience

Many people do many different things whether it is a favor or if it is out of obedience.  For example, parents always ask their children if they have cleaned their room or if they have completed their homework.  Usually our children will say, “No but I will do it later,” or “No not yet, I am doing something.”  When we give those kinds of answers to our parents, we are really saying, “I do not want to do what you are asking me to do.”  We simply do it out of a favor instead out of obedience.  Now the question is, what is the difference between doing it out of a favor and doing it out of obedience?   When we do things out of a favor, we have a mindset of not really wanting to do what is asked of us.  But when we do it out of obedience, we have a mindset of willing to obey no matter what.  This is how our relationship is with God.  We read the bible daily and we understand what God is telling us to do, but yet we are not willing to obey on what He says.  This is when we do it out of a favor by doing what makes us “feel” good in our relationship with God so we can also feel better about ourselves.  In our relationship with God, we need to start doing what He says out of obedience. 

 In Psalm 81:15 it says, “Those who hate the Lord would pretend obedience to Him, and their time of punishment would be forever.”  If you truly want to obey God, then you cannot “pretend” to do what He says in your life.  However, if you do make the choice of not obeying God, then you will suffer the consequence of receiving eternal punishment.  I know this might sound pretty weird for a second but we should be more like dogs.  Dogs are the number one most obedient animals on this earth.  When someone trains a dog how to do certain things, the trainer is really teaching the dog how to obey certain commands.  Just like how a dog is obedient to its trainer, we need to be obedient to Our God!  If God says to do something even though we are not comfortable of doing, we need to have trust in Him in order for us to become a man of obedience.  When we have this trust or this faith in Him, then we will start doing what He wants us to do.  Although, we see a particular man in the bible by the name of Moses who disobeyed God only one time when he was with the Israelites leading them to the promise land.  God commanded Moses to uphold His holiness among the Israelites but he had failed to do this commandment.  Therefore God told Moses that he would only see the land from a distance but not allowed to enter the promise land.  His lack of obedience led to consequences to his own actions. We must take a lesson from Moses that if we sometimes intend to have a lack of obedience towards God, therefore our actions will lead to serious consequences in our lives. 

 Now you may be thinking to yourself that I want to make the decision of obeying God out of obedience but then this leads to another question, what are you willing to do to become a slave of obedience?  Are you willing to give up everything you have in order for you to be obedient towards God?  In Matthew 19:16-26, we see a story which Jesus tells about The Rich Young Man who is not willing to give up everything he owns in order to obey Jesus by receiving an entry into the kingdom of heaven.  He was too busy caught up with materialistic things and not focusing on heavenly things.  We do not know if he gave up his possessions or not during the story.  However, some say he didn’t give up what he owned because he went away weeping.  This would make the man disobedient towards God through his actions by not giving up his possessions.  We must learn and analyze the example of Moses and many other people in the bible when they did not obey God and they had received a consequence because of their own choices they made during their own times.  We need to keep making wise choices towards our own obedience in our daily walk with God in order for us to enter through the kingdom of heaven.  We must become like an obedient dog through the training of God so that we can be called “A Man of Obedience.” This is the kind of man God expects us to be as a leader in our lives.