As I was
scrolling through Facebook one day, I read a quote from a student minister that
said:
“Above all God desires our obedience! When He has our obedience, He has our heart and our mind is focused on Him. Since obeying Him means loving Him more than anything, our obedience will make us more like Jesus who was the example of complete obedience to the Lord!”
Is this
true? Is this what God desires most?
I ‘ve heard
that obedience was the top priority for God in my years of church attendance.
Think about
it, if God just wanted our obedience then why give us a free will to choose?
When you
look at the behavior of the Israelites, you can see that they had an obedience
problem which resulted in bad consequences time and again. It appears that
going through the motions of being obedient in their own effort only lasted short
periods of time and once things were good, they turned their focus back on their
own desires.
Nehemiah
9:19-21, 25-31 …But they
became disobedient and rebelled against You, … therefore You
delivered them into the hand of their oppressors … (NASB)
Scripture
tells us that God is jealous. Is He jealous because He wants obedience?
Usually a
person is jealous because there is love or attention missing from the
relationship. God also wants to be our rock and have us take refuge in Him. So,
if we are placing our trust and confidence in something else, wouldn’t that
provoke jealousy?
Nahum
1:2-3 A jealous and avenging God is
the Lord… the Lord is slow to anger and great in power…
Nahum 1:7 The Lord is good, a stronghold in the
day of trouble and He knows those who take refuge in Him. (NASB)
What does
God require of man? These scriptures answer that question and it appears that
God is not interested in all the external things we try to offer but God wants our
heart. Walking humbly means relying and trusting in God’s love for us and when
we do that, we will start to want what He wants.
Micah
6:6-8 …He has told you, O man,
what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with
your God? (NASB)
The psalmist
starts off this psalm, which contains valuable promises from God for us, with
how those promises are received. A close
relationship with God to the point that the first thing out of your mouth is “I
trust God with everything in my life” is the key.
Psalm
91:1-2 He that dwelleth in the
secret place of the Most High, shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge
and my fortress: my God, in Him will I
trust. (KJV)
Think about
a relationship between a father and son.
If the father said to the son “all I desire from you is your obedience!”
How would it affect that relationship? You would have one of two options: a son
that continuously performed to get his fathers approval or a son that rebelled
because he did not feel loved. Either way it doesn’t pave the way for a good
relationship, one would be very mechanical in nature and the other would be
very painful.
I disagree
with the statement that “Above all God desires our obedience!”
I believe
that “Above all God desires to have a loving relationship with us!”
Jesus tells
us this in His teaching from the sermon on the mount. He is stating that the
public practices of obedience of the religious people in that day are not what
God is after. They were obeying the law, but they were going through the
motions and not doing it from the heart, God wants your heart.
Matthew
6:4,6,18 …your Father who sees
what is done in secret will reward you… (NASB)
God knows
what is best for us and how we can abide in Him. When your eyes focus on Jesus
(light), your spirit then is filled with light. Darkness comes with the
heaviness of labor and toil in this world. This is not an obedience issue; it
is a spiritual issue. Everything in your life starts in the spirit and then
manifests in the physical. Jesus is telling us how to keep our focus on Him. The
condition of our eye pertains to our focus in this life. If your eye is clear,
it has a single focus on the goodness of God and the finished work of Jesus. If
your eye is bad, it is focused on your own efforts and a performance for God mentality
which is full of labor and toil.
Matthew
6:22 The eye is the lamp of the body.
If your eye is clear, your entire body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will
be full of darkness.
Vine’s Greek
Translation:
clear – haplous – simple or
single, singleness of purpose keeps us from the snare of having a double treasure and consequently a
divided heart.
Bad – poneros – labor or toil,
denotes evil that causes labor, pain, sorrow, malignant evil.
Anxiety
about our future and provision (not just money) is a perfect example of labor
and toil. We, as believers, can be diligent to do everything that the bible
tells us to do in order to obtain a promise from God and have some results in
our life, but isn’t that a self-effort mentality full of labor and toil?
Jesus came
to show us how much God loves us and to bring us into relationship with Him!
Matthew
6:25-34 But seek first His kingdom
and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
Vine’s Greek
Translation:
kingdom - basileia – denoting
sovereignty, royal power, dominion
Righteousness – dikaiosune – the
character or quality of being right or just. Means essentially the same as His faithfulness or truthfulness,
that which is consistent with His own nature and
promises.
Seeking His
kingdom and righteousness is seeking to know who God is, His character and His
love for us. Then we will love and trust in Him, which will completely change
the course of our life.
God wants a relationship with each of us, that is His
desire!
