chad mcilvenna

Obedience is a word that scares the crap out me to be honest! I want to be obedient to what the Lord tells me to do and how he instructs me to live my life, but… Obedience requires trust, faith and action.  Now, I know that there should not be a “but” when it comes to obeying God because ultimately if I obey Christ then I will have a successful life. What makes me scared of obedience is merely a shortcoming and sin on my part in that I am letting fear of the unknown to drive me to disobedience. Let me clarify, I am not saying I live a life of disobedience to the Lord. I am just saying that at times I look back at some decisions I have made and I can clearly see where I was not obedient and I can see the trail of destruction that followed my disobedience.
The funny thing to me that I have to constantly remind myself of is that Christ only asks for my obedience because he is driven by pure love for me. He knows what’s best for me. He has made straight my paths. He has created all things. He died for me. He has done and will do all things so that they work together ultimately for my good. You see I think one of the main things that cause disobedience in a lot of us is the desire to determine our own future. We think that we know better than God, that our plans our better for us than his. This thought process as much as I never want to have it in my mind is precisely where my personal disobedience to God comes from. From time to time I do think that I know what’s best for me more than God knows what’s best for me. Guess what? I am wrong every time!
What have I learned from my mistakes? Well… put simply, I have learned to fully lean on God and trust in his plans for my life. Like I mentioned before, He loves me deeply and His plans will lead to my success if I am obedient to living my life according to his plans for me. This is a paraphrase of Luke 6:46-49 which is what got me thinking about all of this in the first place. Jesus was speaking to a crowd as he often did, but in this instance he was talking about what happens when people listen to his teaching and follow it and in contrast, what happens to those who listen but do not follow. For the first man in the story, the one who obeys… He is the one who when building a house finds success in his finished product because he dug deep into the ground, found solid rock and put his house on a firm foundation. The test of a well-built house is how it survives a storm. Well…the storms and floods came against this mans house (as storms and floods do happen in our lives) and it was not destroyed because it was built on a firm foundation. The second knew that he should build on a foundation but took a shortcut and built his house right on the ground without a foundation. On a side note here, I love that the story says specifically in both scenarios “when the storms came” , not “if” the storms came because like I said before storms will and do come in our lives. So “when” the storms came this man’s house was swept away and ended in a “heap of ruins” the story says.
The point of all this is: Christ is not asking things of us that are mere routine, busy work, chores or tasks. He is not asking us to do religious things either. What he asks of us is directly tied to our success in this life and the next. The things he asks us to be obedient in are things that have far reaching results. He asks that we simply obey. You see we cannot see what storms approach on the horizon. He however, knows all we will go through and all the storms we will face. Our obedience is the mechanism by which God grows us and gives us the tools and strength to face whatever storms may come.