One of the most important things we need to embrace in our walk with Jesus is obedience. Samuel told the king Saul, after his foray into doing his own thing, that ‘to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams.’ (1 Sam 15:22) These are strong words. Samuel went on to tell Saul that ‘rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry’ (1 Sam 15:23) and that the kingship would be taken from him as a result of this.
We need to ask God to search us and know us and reveal to us the areas of our lives where we are not being fully obedient. We so often can be like Jonah, running in the opposite direction from God, but perhaps more worryingly than this flagrant disobedience are the times when we compromise and rationalise what we do. We partially obey, thinking some obedience is better than none, when actually God searches our hearts and knows all our deception and half-truths and longs for us to obey whole-heartedly everything He tells us to do.
Jesus’s mother told the servants at Cana, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’ (Jn 2:5) That simple text, when pondered and assimilated into our lives, becomes our springboard to obedience. God only needs our willingness. He even supplies the power to do that which He asks, once we yield ourselves to Him. Give up the excuses and step out in faith today. Obey God.
