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Commitment

Obedience is a word in the Bible many Christians would like to ignore, but Abraham was committed to obeying God. Abraham was filled with inspired zeal to do anything and everything God asked him to do, even when God asked him to offer his beloved son as a sacrifice. Abraham’s readiness was evident because after he had heard from God, he rose early the very next morning to begin his pilgrimage of obedience. Perhaps Abraham was eager to obey because he knew he could trust God. Because Abraham was obedient, God opened up His storehouse of blessing upon His servant. Isn’t it awesome that God is willing to bless all the nations of the earth because of one man’s obedience? What might God do with our obedience?

Obedience means submission; submission is habitual yielding to authority. The word yielding even sounds awful! To yield requires commitment. We are to decide to obey, and then commit and submit. It is easy to enthusiastically submit to authority when everything is lovely, but submission is not submission until we don’t agree. Submission only happens when we obey even though we don’t agree with what we have been asked to do. Until we obey even when we disagree, we have never submitted at all! We were in agreement, but we weren’t in submission.

Why are people so afraid to obey — to commit, to submit, and to habitually yield to authority? I believe obedience requires a response of trust and a commitment to that response. Obedience requires an actual follow-through, and people are not great at finishing what they begin. People generally are all great starters, because everyone likes quick, instantaneous provision and change. Everyone wants immediate results; few people are prepared to wait. But God is a builder, not a magician. He is a builder of life, and the finest buildings always take time.

In the Old Testament, people obeyed because it meant death if they didn’t, so obedience was a fairly good option! But in this new life in Christ, under a new covenant, obedience is an issue of the heart. Obeying God is not a fact-based decision; it is a faith-based decision.

We can obey the Lord because He requires it, regardless of what we can see. But it is best to obey because we trust God. Trust does not observe obedience through the eyes of man, but by seeing God’s instruction through the eyes of the Spirit. If we trust God’s character, as Abraham did, we can trust that our obedience will never take us to a place that we don’t want to be.

We are the army of the Lord, and we can only go so far if we do not have complete obedience and complete commitment. Obedience to God is not a mental discipline; it is a yielded heart to God. Obedience is a beautiful part of worship. There are always people who make a choice not to enter into the corporate act of worship. In the middle of the incredible presence of God, they stop short of entering in because they lack obedience to His invitation to come into His presence. They fold their arms, lock up on the inside, and basically say, “I will not worship God.”

If we don’t obey, we disobey. There is no middle ground, and God detest the middle ground. He does not like lukewarm. So don’t let fear of obedience rule and bind you.

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