Obedience. . . sure, but how?  John 5.19-24

‘Can’t say for sure, but I do not think my mind rests when I go to sleep.  One of the last things I did before I went to bed last night was press ‘send’ on my Mac – had to start the Morning Briefings on their techno travels, both local and abroad.  Not surprising that I woke up thinking, “so Jesus did only what his father was doing, born out of a heart of obedience . . . but how did Jesus know what to obey?” 

So, I got my little prayer notebook and Bible (coffee too, of course!), and inquired of the Lord …

“Good Morning, Lord God.  Jesus, I am looking again at the things you said here in John’s gospel.  You said whatever the Father does, you also do, so that means you must have been watching him very closely, in order to see what he did.  Jesus, you said you only speak the words the Father gives you to speak, so you must have been listening intently.  I am reading again your words in verse 30, “By myself I can do nothing … I seek not to please myself but him who sent me.”  Oh Jesus, you put your own feelings and wants aside for your Father’s; in fact, you came to fulfill the purposes of God the Father, not just on the cross, but every step of the way, so that meant intentionally choosing to be dependent on him.  Lord, I remember that you regularly withdrew to a solitary place to pray and to be alone with your Father; so that is how you knew what to do!  That is how you knew what to speak!  You trained yourself to go to him, to listen to him, to wait for him, and then you were prepared.  If you needed to spend precious time in prayer, seeking God’s heart and mind for what to say and what to do, what business to be about … then how much more do I!    Teach me some more about obedience, please!”

And so I sat quietly.

Obedience is not just about following rules, it is a heart attitude of wanting our lives and characters to be God-honoring, out of devotion to him.  Jesus chose to be absolutely dependent on God, subjugating his will to the divine plan of the Father.  You and I are called to do no less.  We are called to surrender our will to God—to choose his way of our own.  It was in Matthew’s gospel that our Lord was quoted as saying, “If any man will come after me, he must deny himself, pick up his cross, and follow me.”  Matthew 16.24

“Okay, Lord, I get that—I can work on that—deny myself—what I would rather do, or naturally choose to do, and instead choose what I believe is the higher road, the path less taken, that sort of thing, right?”  Yes, Child, keep reading.

“Pick up my cross? I have a big, rough-hewn one in my backyard, left from Long Beach ministry days—is that what you mean?  It is heavy, but I am strong, I can pick it up, Lord.”  That is not what I mean by picking up your cross, Child.

Understand - the only reason to pick up a cross in Jesus’ day was because you had to carry it, before you were nailed to it, to be executed. 

Sure, I often wear a cross around my neck, partly to show my faith, my love for Jesus, partly because crosses are fashionable in our western culture.  But the cross is (and was) a symbol of death and torture; the cross cost Jesus everything!  There was nothing fashionable about it.  So when Jesus said, ‘deny yourself, pick up your cross, and follow me’ … he was saying, ‘Your priorities will not be number one anymore, mine will; and you won’t die when you are 77 and ½ years old, you will need to die today—right now—the day you decide you want to follow Me.  That is to say, you will need to die to yourself because following Me is costly.  Now, are you still IN?  Okay, right this way then.”

Followers deny themselves everyday by surrendering their wills to God . . . by choosing to seek him in his Word and in prayer.  How else will we know what to say?  How else will we know what he wants us to do?  There is no other way to trust and obey.

Christine