Obedience

Obedient.

What images are conjured up when we think about that word? Maybe some soldiers carrying out orders?  Stopping at the side of the road when the police flashers are behind your car?   I hope this doesn’t reveal anything psychological about me when I admit to it, but when I hear the word, I think of a child doing things as they are told.  I don’t see it as coercion or anything like that.  I see a trusting relationship where the child participates.  It is equally interesting that at he same time-I’m thinking of a child being obedient, I can better describe it in terms of what they are not doing.  Yet I think defining obedience with disobedience in not really adequate.
“While Jesus was here on earth, he offered prayers and pleadings, with a loud cry and tears, to the one who could rescue him from death.  And God heard his prayers because of his deep reverence for God.  Even though Jesus was God’s Son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered.  In this way, God qualified him as a perfect High Priest, and he became the source of eternal salvation for all those who obey him.” Hebrews 5: 7-9 NIV

Does obedience come from suffering?  Does it come from a positive relationship with someone?  Does it come when the bottom drops out of our “expectations?”  I get a sense that what is described into the Hebrews was an attitude that Jesus had with the Father.  Although he was divine, he subjected himself into a time of suffering to learn obedience.  That might now look like a relational word, that Jesus built up a empowering relationship by “hanging in there” and trusting in what God in mind.  No matter what.

Does our earthly suffering bring us closer to that obedience, or does it make us throw in the towel and walk away?  When we wait on God’s plan, are we willing to be molded, pressed, shaped, and even put through up against the gates of hell itself in order to learn how to trust God and his provision for us all?  Most people don’t have the stuff for that these days.  Certainly, many denominations struggle in the same manner.  They miss the power of simply letting God guide, shape, mold, and direct us.  We have to have a time to interject our thoughts into the argument.

Jesus did not.  He endured the suffering.  He walked through the pain.

He was obedient.

Advertisement