Tag: Obedience to God

5 Saul said, “Who are you, Lord?”
The voice answered, “I am Jesus, the one you are persecuting. 6 Get up now and go into the city. Someone there will tell you what you must do.”
Acts Chapter 9 verses 5 & 6 ERV

When my parents went on their date nights, they would hand out the chores for the three oldest kids to do. I must have been around 6 years old. I know that my tasks needed to get done. I had promised my mom that I would get to them.

My older brother used to gripe about doing anything that required soap, water or cleaners. Yet, when the day was done, he was the only one that would end up doing all his chores. He was two years older than me and yet he was far wiser than even my oldest sister when it came to working smart and hard.

I, on the other hand, would do as much as I needed to do and then rush out to play with my friends. My oldest sister would delegate her work to the rest of us and, therefore, look good when my parents came back from their date night.
In the end, the only one that really did things with a cheerful and obedient heart was my older brother Eddie. The rest of us, including the youngest ones, well, let’s just say that we did the chores just to make sure we didn’t get in trouble…

Now some of us may see the above verse and say, hey there something wrong, didn’t Saul or Paul say,”Who are you, Lord? … 6 What will thou have me to do?”
There are manuscripts that have left this part of verse 6 out. But to the purists, this is blasphemy.
I am on who looks at a few versions of the same chapter to get the gist of what the writer is saying.
What I hope and pray for, is that the reader actually asks him or herself this question:

Does it matter whether Paul (old name Saul) said the omitted text or not? Because what God wants from us is so much more than lip service.
I know that many times, I have given the Lord promises that deep down, I knew in my heart it would be a hard thing to do.
Like the chores I had to do when I was younger, sometimes, I catch myself just saying, ‘yes’ because I have to and not because I want to really do what I am being led to do.
You see, obedience is very hard. We have a natural tendency to rebel against any authority.
God tells us in the Hebrew Scriptures book of Micah that God has required us to do:

1. To do what is right,
2. To love mercy,
3. To walk humbly with God.
Micah tells us that we know these things but yet, most of us make it so hard. Not before God but before our fellow human beings. We treat each other pretty bad sometimes. Then we feel bad and have to apologize to each other. Why? Because we forget that we have to what is right and just and humbly do these things to others.

What I have to remind myself almost every day is that there was one person that was able to be obedient, even to the point of dying for someone else’s guilt. In Philippians chapter 2 verse 8, it says that this great and innocent man, humbled himself to die a horrible death, even though he wasn’t guilty of anything.  As a matter of fact, he has been the only human being who has led a pure life.He didn’t have to die for the crimes he was convicted of and yet he obediently went to his assassination.
If this man, called Jesus, could do this for my sins, I can also change my heart to be more obedient to what Jesus wants in my life.
I invite you today, to be obedient to Jesus’ calling on your lives. If you already have a steady relationship with Him, I ask that you be more open to obedience.
If you don’t know who Jesus is, or have only heard stories of His life, I invite you to have a real and lasting relationship with Him. You will find that He is very loving, patient and graceful.
Please be obedient today. Do what is right. What is merciful and what is obedient. Ask Jesus to help you in your lives.