In Christ, obedience is no longer wrenched from us by guilt, terror, humiliation, addiction, greed, or pain. Now our obedience flows out of surprised gratitude and ever-growing love.
Not that a submitted life is all sweetness and breathy joy; it is often hard. Loving surrender sometimes looks like Jesus sweating blood in the Garden, begging for any other way, but accepting God's will. It looks like wistfully watching two rare hours of free time ebb away because my neighbor needs to talk. It looks like praises leaving the battered lips of kneeling men about to die. Obedience to Christ demands sacrifice - the cross born -great and small.
But the path of obedience often winds through pleasant places too. I followed God's call to a ranch way up in Pike National Forest, CO, and spent nine months in soul-filling natural beauty. I obeyed my Father and married the strong, goofy, godly man I woke up next to this morning.
Mary's obedience to God gave her the joy of the world's only perfect son. It also pierced her with the horror of watching Him die.
I don't know where obedience to God will take you. But I can promise that He will allow no act of obedience to be wasted. He grows the smallest mustard seed, fallen and crushed, into a huge, fruitful, sheltering tree.
Before and after we come to God, His love is always intervening, redeeming, and saving. Obedience is the only possible response to so complete a rescue. And it is the only path to true freedom.
"It was for freedom that Christ set us free! Stand firm therefore, and never submit again to a yoke of slavery." Galatians 5:1
"If you love Me, you will keep my commands." John 14:15
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