Obedience Sucks

Okay you may cringe at the word but I can't find a synonym that captures what I am thinking better. Obedience sucks. It's hard. It is not the pathway to blessing and comfort. It is, instead, the surest way to the cross. An invitation to die. A way to experience resurrection but only after the pain of Good Friday.

I don't know where I got the idea - surely not from Jesus by the way - that if I could just grow in my obedience, life would get easier in direct proportion. If I only follow God's will more closely then things will improve. But they didn't and they don't.

Not quite two years ago I made a decision that has profoundly impacted my life. At the time I was sure it was God's will for me and my family. Several times over the months since I have experienced confirmation of this. I remember thinking "This will mean good things and new opportunities. God will work out the things that are hindering me. And these difficulties? The answer lies in obedience."

Guess what? I imagine you know what follows. Things did change - for the worse. My circumstances have sunk to a new low in so many ways that I couldn't have imagined. I can say, with only slight risk of hyperbole, that these months have been among the worst of my life. And to top it all off, I had a chance to revisit this decision not long ago - in effect, to undo it. Nope. God made abundantly clear that this path is the one I am supposed to be on. Swell.

I don't mean to sound whiny, although I can be. I am simply realizing in a powerful way that obedience to God's will is most often a direct line to suffering and challenge. Jesus obeyed God utterly. He was rejected by his people and betrayed and abandoned by his friends. He was tortured and executed in the end.

Two of my heroes also obeyed God and paid for it. Eric Liddel (the runner who was one of the featured characters in the movie Chariots of Fire) obeyed God's call to the Chinese mission field and died of a brain tumor in a Japanese prison camp. Dietrich Bonhoeffer joined a conspiracy to save Germany from Hitler and ended up dying on a gallows a short term before the camp where he was held was liberated. Both men had a fame and opportunity that would have made them celebrities had they acted differently.

Now I would not say that my obedience or my trials are like Bonhoeffer's or Liddel's - let alone Jesus'. But they remind me, as do others who have walked this way before me, that this is a hard, painful road. And it's one I need to walk more faithfully.

Back to it.