Walking The Path 3: Obeying till the End
Updated: Apr 27, 2019
To wrap up this 3-part journey, I highlight 2 lessons earlier learnt. We discussed waiting on God, this is necessary to refuel and prepare, perhaps for rigors that come with the very answers we are seeking. Then we addressed hearing from God, filtering off the confusing voices of the devil and ourselves. We established that recognizing God’s voice is preceded by recognizing His person and submitting to His leadership.
After waiting on and then hearing from God, the next step usually is to obey Him, this should be the easiest part or is it?
Obeying till the end
And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore, God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name... Philippians 2:8-11
As we observe the anniversary of Christ’s death & later resurrection – Easter, there is no better time to take a lesson from Christ’s sacrifice. His obedience was absolute, in fact on the evening he died, it must have seemed like he had lost the battle, like God had lost the battle to the devil.
Christ’s obedience was based on faith and trust, and so should ours. Left to him, Christ would have the burden of the cross pass over him (Matthew 26:39) but he knew better. At the peak of Christ’s obedience on the cross, the suffering for Him was not only physical, He felt forsaken by the one who sent Him, yet He obeyed till the end.
Not (m)any of us are required to lay down our lives for others in obedience, but quite often we are in the position where we wonder what’s going on. Because even though we are in the path set by God – obeying, things just don’t seem to be working right. We often get confounded and ask ourselves if we really heard God before getting into our marriages, started a business, changed jobs, quit a job for a higher purpose etc. At these times, the fact that things are not working can be made worse by the fact that the God seems to go dead silent. We feel, like Christ, forsaken by God.
In many ways, the walk with God is like going to an unknown place far away with the help of a navigator. The most important thing is to check with the guide that you are on the right route, to turn left when it says left and, when it says so, the other way. Sometimes in our journeys, we hit these long stretches where the map stays silent and that’s when our trust gets tested, the roads may get rough but the navigator says nothing, there are alternative roads and yet nothing, the roads can get narrower and dirtier and the map says nothing, at this point we feel the map has gone wrong but we carry on because we know the map is our best chance to get where we need to be, we know that the navigator’s silence means ‘just follow the road till I tell you otherwise’ and usually the navigator bursts to life in the end. The same with God, be connected and move with His instructions, turn when He says turn even if you don’t feel good about it, keep going if He says so even when the road gets rough - the absence of comfort is not the absence of God, the presence of God is an assurance of safety no matter what physical evidence presents.
We are taught from elementary school that we have 5 senses - sight, touch, hearing, taste and smell. We are taught that nothing exists outside these senses and they become our limits. God asks us to ignore these inhibitions in our walk with Him and live beyond what we feel, He asks us to live by faith – to trust and obey till the end.
Not a burden we bear, Not a sorrow we share, But our toil He doth richly repay; Not a grief or a loss, Not a frown or a cross, But is blest if we trust and obey
Trust and obey, For there’s no other way To be happy in Jesus, But to trust and obey.
“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose”