Obedience

Blessed are all who fear the LORD,
who walk in obedience to him.
(Psalm 128:1)

Have you ever noticed that a two year old's favorite word is, "No!"? Even if it doesn't make any sense to respond with "no", that is what you get. I remember one time when my little niece was in the "no" phase. After she responded with, "No!" to me, I looked at her and said, "How about Yes, I like Yes. Yes is a good word." She responded to me by kicking me in the shin. Not exactly how I would have liked for her to respond, I mean, maybe, no, was better. It would have been easy for me to yell at her after she kicked me, but I've learned that yelling doesn't solve anything. It just makes the problem worse. Instead of yelling, I talked to her about how kicking people wasn't what nice little girls did. I told her that "kicking was unacceptable" Granted I'm pretty sure she has no idea what the word "unacceptable" means, but right after I said that she came over to me and gave me a big hug. Obedience is very rarely easy. It requires setting aside what you would like to do and how you would like to do it and instead, listening what someone else would like for you to do. Let's face it, we've all deliberately disobeyed someone at some point in our lives. I have found that when it comes to obeying what God is telling us to do, it is important to obey right away. God had been telling me for well over a year that I needed to make a change in my life and that I needed to leave the church I had been attending for 8 years. I ignored what God was telling me to do because I loved that church and I loved the people there. They were like my family. Over the course of the year of my disobedience, things started to get difficult for me at that church. God really speaks to me through music, and well, I found myself unable to connect and unable to worship like I previously had. After being gently reminded by God that I was being disobedient and I needed to leave that church, I knew I had two choices. One, listen to God and obey, or two, stay and pay the consequences for my continued disobedience. It was leap of faith to leave the church I love and see where God would lead me. It didn't take long for the fruits of my obedience to come forth. A new job with much better hours, opportunities to minister to others through music, and overwhelming joy flooded into my life from seemingly out of no where. I've learned that obeying God will not make much sense from my perspective, but God sees the bigger picture. He knows what this step of obedience will lead to, I do not. Has God been asking you to do something that you have been ignoring? Maybe it's time you listen.