Immediate Obedience

Over the last few months I have been doing some searching, not soul searching, (I despise that term) but searching in my walk with God. I have a brain that is always on the go, it is like internet explorer with many tabs open. Sometimes, well actually a lot of the time my brain has locked the door to Mr Sleep, stopping me from getting the rest I need. I tried many things to try to quieten the sound, but to no avail. I digress.

The topic of this blog is something the Lord has been pressing on my heart for some time now, and I am sure many of you will know what I am talking about when I get round to talking about it that of immediate obedience. I have always had an issue with obedience, not that I struggled with obeying commands all the time, but it was more that I struggled with timing. I didn’t want to do anything I was asked to do immediately after being asked to do it. My mother will concur with me, I was not great at taking orders and following through with them. This has changed a lot as I have “matured”(or so I think). I have always been quite stubborn, from a very early age I would rather do things of my own accord. This stubbornness seeped into my Christian walk. I would oft hear the spirit nudging me to do something but the other voice would appear louder and would be more convincing telling me to carry on doing what I was doing. I learned how to quench the Spirit. Or at least push the spirits behest to the back of the request line.

However, the issue here is that often I was calling the Lord’s command a request. If it was a request from God, it would sound like this, “If you would be so kind, could you in your spare time do this for me.” the problem here is that God didn’t say that. Could you imagine what the great commission would sound like if it was just a request. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. So if you are not too busy could you go and make disciples of all nations, perhaps baptising them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, it would also be great if you could teach them to observe all that I have said to you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age, so no hurry," I think that would have really changed how the disciples and we responded. Sometimes we sadly do treat the great commission like this.

Today in our churches men’s breakfast, my pastor asked us to consider what it meant to be immediately obedient. It got me thinking about the word immediately. In the book of Acts we read many occasions where immediately something was said or done in response to the command of the Spirit. For example, in Acts 3 the spirit through Peter healed a man, and Immediately the man’s ankles were strengthened and he was healed. Or in Acts 8 the Spirit led Philip to go to a specific place and he went, and supernaturally caught up with a chariot with an Ethiopian Eunuch, who was reading but struggling to understand the meaning of scripture. Philip then was able to share the Gospel with this man and the man believed. Could you imagine how different this situation would have been if Philip had given an excuse. I am sure that God would have still made it happen through some way or another. Throughout scripture we see the immediate obedience of many biblical characters to do as the Lord commanded. And probably an equal number of characters who were known for delayed obedience, Jonah coming to mind.

So how do we become immediately obedient, how do we go when God commands us to. Well firstly we must step out of our comfort zone. For me and a lot of you reading this, we don’t like the awkwardness of approaching someone, or the difficulty of starting a conversation with someone we have never met. We would rather awkwardly smile and try not to make eye contact while speeding up our walking pace. The ridiculous thing is that when we have listened to the spirit and have done as commanded we have seen the amazing work of the Lord in touching someone’s life. We have on occasion seen miracles, and yet we forget and fall back into our self centred comfort zone. Jesus commanded us to deny ourselves, pick up our cross and follow him. That first part can be so difficult in a world where everything is about self. Denying ourselves is to give our everything to God, as it says in Mark 8, if we want to save our souls we must lose it. In so losing one’s soul for the sake of God and the Gospel will save it. To me this means we are to give up everything, to have the gospel and God as everything.

He carries on by commanding us to take up our cross. When I think of the cross, I immediately think of suffering, pain, opposition, humiliation and death, so when God commands us to pick up our cross, he is saying to truly follow him, we must expect opposition, suffering and humiliation. We should be willing to be opposed, to be humiliated, because we are treasuring Jesus above human approval, honour, comfort and life. I ask you and myself, do I consider Jesus more precious than life? I can honestly say more than not, I don’t.  John Piper put it nicely:

“That’s the command of verse 34 (Mark 8): You are a new self. Act like it. Deny the old, comfort craving self and embrace the superior joy of knowing Jesus, no matter how high the cost on this earth.”  - Deny Yourself for More Delight - John Piper

So What does this mean with regards to immediate obedience? Well I believe that if we consider knowing Jesus as superior to the comfort craving self then we are naturally going to immediately obey Him. We will know the joy of serving and loving Jesus that we won’t want to serve anything else. The good news is, that we aren't doing it on our own. Paul in Romans 5 says he has the desire to do what is right, just not the ability to do so. Thanks be to God that he gave us a Paraclete to sit on our shoulder, directing, guiding and interceding on our behalf. In John 14 Jesus says that God will send the helper, the Holy Spirit to teach us and to remind us of what Jesus said. I find this quite encouraging, as I know I often have not got the ability without the spirit’s help.

Going back to the great commission in Matthew 28, We see the command to GO and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. In this case if we are denying ourselves and carrying our cross, we will our of pure joy of knowing Jesus and knowing the gospel, want to go and make disciples. We will want to, without caring about the opinions of the world around us, share the great news of the gospel to everyone, through not just our words but also our actions everyday. Again I am thankful for the help of the Holy Spirit in this, I alone couldn't do it. There is a reason why this is called the great commission, and not the great request. It is the most important thing for us to do. Sharing the message of the gospel with everyone we meet through word and action, and helping them to see the great joy we have in knowing Jesus, should be done in immediate obedience not delayed obedience. Time is short and people need Jesus.

So my challenge to you, (if you made it this far without falling asleep) do you consider it pure joy to know Jesus and to deny the old comfort craving self? And through this do you immediately obey when God commands you?  And do you share the gospel with everyone at every opportunity. If you like me, answer not always, perhaps we must stop what we are doing, and ask the spirit to open our ears and hearts to learn to immediately obey. We will see how beautiful and amazing it is to do so, what a joy it will be to serve a loving, caring and all encapsulating God. Let us go out and share the great news of the gospel with everyone wherever and whenever we are.

I pray that this small post, if it at all makes sense and God will speak through it. It certainly spoke to me this morning and the past few months when I pondered over it.