Obeying at all Cost

The following is a daily devotional study from April 30 from the devotional 365 Days Calvin. I would highly recommend this devotional for anyone who might be looking for a brief, challenging, and encouraging devotional. I felt I would share this one specifically, as it really resonated with me. Obedience has never been my strength, especially when I am asked to do the hard thing. The thing that no part of my flesh wants to do, but the thing that I know I need to do. I pray you might find this to be a challenge to you as well. What do you feel God asking you to do today? What is that thing you have been putting off, or hoping would go away? Is God asking you to do something, but you have been choosing not to listen? By no means do I ask you these questions suggesting that I am good at it! I continue to struggle each day to step out in faith trusting that obedience will have it's reward. But I hope to spur you on, to do that thing. If God is asking you to do something, it is because there is benefit to you and more importantly to the Glory of God. Be encouraged. He is walking with us today, and will give us the courage and strength to do what He is calling us to do, if we are are truly seeking to honour Him with every aspect of our lives.

Obeying at all Cost

Jeremiah 42: 5 - 6

Then they said to Jeremiah, “May the Lord be a true and faithful witness against us if we do not act according to all the word with which the Lord your God sends you to us. Whether it is good or bad, we will obey the voice of the Lord our God to whom we are sending you, that it may be well with us when we obey the voice of the Lord our God.”

Extended Reading: Hebrews 11: 1 - 10

Jeremiah acts as a kind of mediator here, addressing the people in God's name as though he has been sent form heaven. The people respond by saying they will do whatever God commands. They say even more emphatically: Whether it be good, or whether it be evil, we will obey the voice of the LORD our God.

In saying this, the people do not suggest that God's word is wrong of in any way unjust;rather, they use the word good in the sense of being joyful, and evil as being sad or grievous. They ask for nothing more than that God will declare to them what pleases him, to which they will be so submissive that they will refuse him nothing, even if it is contrary to the flesh.

If this declaration proceeds from the heart, it is a testimony of true piety;; for the minds of the godly ought so to be framed as to obey God without making any exception, whether he commands what is contrary to their purpose or leads them where they do not wish to go. By contrast, those who wish to make an agreement with God, saying he should require nothing but what is agreeable to them, show that they do not know that it means to serve God.

True obedience of faith requires that we renounce our desires and do not set up our own arguments and wishes against the Word of God. We do not object to what God requires of us, saying it is too hard or not quite agreeable to us. So whether it is good or evil, meaning agreeable to or contrary to the feelings of the flesh, we ought to embrace what God requires and commands. This is the foundational measure of true religion.