Obedience is Hard
- By Jon Hagen
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- 01 May, 2018
Obedience is Not About Understanding but About Trust
| I was out cutting the grass the other week after having retrieved my lawn mower from the repair shop. Tony changed the oil, cleaned the carburetor, and sharpened the blade for me. I love Tony. His shop is simple, but it's clean and orderly. He's on it. Tony does solid work, and I was actually looking forward to firing up the mower and pushing. To me, mowing is bringing order to my little plot of land like Tony does with his shop. It's therapeutic.
Until I looked over at the yard of one of my neighbors. Whatever joy I had at the smell of freshly cut grass quickly left at the sight of the mess over there. Let's just say that the neighbor's trashy yard at that point became a metaphor for what was going on inside of me. Compounding my trouble is the history we have with this neighbor: he borrows our mower since his is usually broken. Additionally, he always contacts my wife when he wants our mower; not once has he ever asked me.
You get the picture? Please tell me you see and sympathize with my grief. Tell me as well that my anger is justified. I was hustling to finish the job because Tamarah and I were leaving the next day for a weekend away. And I had a premonition, for real, that the neighbor guy was going to hit my wife with a request to borrow our mower while we were away. I was close. The next day, as Tamarah and I are driving down the highway, she gets a text that reads, "Borrowing your mower. Thanks."
I said, "Give him Tony's contact info!" Emphatically. She said, "I gave him a standing offer to borrow our mower." I said, "You what?" She said, "Relax, it's going to be okay." I didn't say anything else at that point, but I sure was thinking things.
A subplot to this drama is that there was a Scripture verse interfering with my darker thoughts back while I was mowing. No joke. I tried suppressing it but couldn't shake it. "Use your worldly resources to benefit others and make friends. Then, when your possessions are gone, others will welcome you to an eternal home" (Luke 16:9, NLT). But Lord! For the nearly ninety minutes it took me to mow, trim, and clean up the yard, I argued within myself. And then when the neighbor's text came the next day just like I figured it would, boom. Case closed. My anger was justified.
Now Tamarah and I are riding down the highway in silence. It's strategic. She's learned over the years that fewer words at a time like this are better than too many. No need to aggravate the situation. I've learned over the years that when I'm aggravated, God is trying to say something if I'll listen. After sorting it through, I eventually begin to talk it out. I tell her about the verse in Luke that is troubling me. It's embarrassing. It's convicting. She just keeps listening. I knew it's coming down to obedience, but man, this is hard. The other guy's issues are so obvious.
One of the things I continue learning about obedience is that it's not about understanding but about trust. "Trust in the Lord, and do good" (Psalm 37:3). The one, trusting, begets the other, obeying. As when Peter said to Cornelius and his family, "In every nation anyone who fears [i.e., trusts] God and does what is right is acceptable to Him" (Acts 10:35).
This is the heart of the Christian ethic: God works life into our hearts, and then we obey in response. "Faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead" (James 2:17). As hard as it sometimes is, we obey because God is the Potter and we are the clay. And also because when we do obey it always leads to human flourishing. He knows we're all the better for it when we follow His lead.
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| Because God loves a cheerful giver, and so does your neighbor,
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