Why Pray for Instant Obedience
Here’s this week’s entry from Pray Big for Your Life.
There are several reasons to pray for a rapid Obedience Response Time. Here are just a few.
First, God promises to honor obedience.
The Bible is loaded with statements about the importance of obedience in a believer’s life. God seems to go out of his way to make the case for the benefits of obedience. That is something, by the way, that he didn’t have to do. God could require our obedience just because it’s right and he’s God. He could expect us to follow his Word and not give any promise of blessing or benefit for it. But that’s not how God operates. He’s a loving, benevolent God who loves to honor the obedience of his people.
Listen to some of God’s promises to the nation of Israel regarding their obedience (see Deuteronomy 28:1-10):
If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully follow all his commands I give you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations on earth.
All these blessings will come upon you and accompany you if you obey the Lord your God: You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country.
The fruit of your womb will be blessed, and the crops of your land and the young of your livestock–the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.
Your basket and your kneading trough will be blessed.
You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out.
The Lord will grant that the enemies who rise up against you will be defeated before you. They will come at you from one direction but flee from you in seven.
The Lord will send a blessing on your barns and on everything you put your hand to. The Lord your God will bless you in the land he is giving you.
The Lord will establish you as his holy people, as he promised you on oath, if you keep the commands of the Lord your God and walk in his ways.
Then all the peoples on earth will see that you are called by the name of the Lord, and they will fear you.
It would be difficult to overstate the abundance of favor that God promises to show on behalf of those who obey him. I don’t know what exactly those great promises (and the countless others like it in the Bible) mean for the lives of believers today, but I do know that God is faithful to his Word. That’s why I always tell Christians who are wrestling with their Obedience Response Time that God honors obedience. If you are faithful to him, he promises to be even more faithful to you. His Word promises it.
Second, obedience increases your spiritual maturity.
When God calls you to a step of obedience, there is always more going on than what you can immediately see or discern. God may indeed want you to serve a neighbor, forgive an enemy, or repent of a sin, but he typically is also working another, longer-term agenda. When God calls you to obey him, he wants to mature you.
Radical obedience is a crash course in spiritual maturity. When you step out in obedience to God’s call, you guarantee that your maturity will increase and your walk with him will deepen. Besides bringing God’s favor and blessing, obedience brings depth to the most important relationship we have—our relationship with God.
When Moses accepted God’s call to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, he entered into an adventure of growth and intimacy with God that lasted 80 years. Moses discovered things about God that he would have never known had he remained in the safety of the Sinai Desert. When Peter stepped out of the boat onto the stormy waters of the Sea of Galilee, he too entered into a level of relational intimacy with Jesus that he wouldn’t have known otherwise. And even though he lost his courage and quickly began to sink, he still experienced something with Jesus that the others in the boat missed.
Obedience thrusts you into a level of dependence on and knowledge of Christ that is impossible to know in the supposedly safe quarters of sluggish obedience. You want to pray for an immediate Obedience Response Time because your spiritual development depends on it. You’ll never become what God intends for you as long as you argue and negotiate with him when he calls. Get up and get going; step out of the boat. You can’t afford not to.
Finally, your instant obedience causes a ripple effect of blessing. The impact of obedience typically goes way beyond your own personal benefit. God’s command for you to obey him often includes his plan to bless others through you. Tony’s obedience has produced significant blessing in the lives of some Austin homeless people. Before you stall in your obedience to God, think about who else stands to gain by your obedience. You will probably quickly realize that the impact of your obedience, or disobedience, goes way beyond you.
In early September of 2005, thousands of Hurricane Katrina victims made their way to Austin. Some of the first arrivals were housed in a local school district athletic facility. These dear people were in significant shock, had lost everything, and in many cases didn’t know if all their loved ones had survived the storm. They languished for days at the facility until housing could be found for them.
On the first day that some of the survivors came to Austin, I felt a gentle leading of the Spirit to drive down to the facility, try to meet a few of the survivors, and just take them to lunch. I thought that I could offer a few of them a brief distraction from their chaos. When I got to the facility, I told the security guard what I wanted to do. He disappeared inside and came out a few minutes later with three haggard-looking folks, a young man and woman, and a 12-year-old child. They had lived through a terrifying and exhausting few days. Over lunch, I heard their stories and learned that there were about thirty more people in their group. When I dropped them off back at the facility, I promised to try to help them.
What happened next still astounds me. As people in my church heard about this family’s needs, the offers for help came pouring in. Within just a few days, we were able to find apartments for all thirty of them and a few others as well. We completely furnished their apartments and helped them secure the six-months-free rent that FEMA was offering. It was the largest outpouring of money, materials and volunteer effort in our church’s history. Several of the families attended our church until they moved back to New Orleans. One family decided to stay in Austin and plant a church. We helped them get started.
The impact of that weekend is still being felt in our church today, years later. Our involvement with those Katrina survivors helped push our missions ministry to the forefront in our church. It helped us see the impact for good that we could have if we were willing to give and sacrifice generously. It also showed many in our church the great joy that comes with serving those who can’t return the favor.
At the time of this writing, our church gives at least 20% of our annual revenues to missions. We are praying and planning to do more. We still send large groups of men, women and children each year to the Gulf Coast to help with the ongoing Katrina restoration effort. We also send them to places such as: Managua, Nicaragua; Juarez, Mexico; and Guatemala. And, we can trace the momentum of the missions movement in our church to Labor Day weekend, 2005, when we decided to help a few Katrina survivors. And we can trace that to my seemingly small decision to obey a leading to take a few people to lunch.
God will use your obedience. He’ll use it to change you and bless others. Pray for an instant Obedience Response Time. You don’t want to miss the adventure that God has for you or hinder the blessing that he has for others. Pray Mark 1:17-18 for yourself: Lord, when you call me, please give me the courage to instantly obey you. Help me to drop whatever I’m doing and follow you.
Discussion Questions
Rate your Obedience Response Time on a 1-5 scale. Let 1 represent stalled or slow obedience and 5 represent immediate obedience.
Can you name a time that you delayed your obedience to God and it cost you or others? What happened?
Can you name a time that you obeyed God and he honored it?
Why is obedience scary? What keeps so many of us from practicing immediate obedience with God?
How might your life be different if you shortened your Obedience Response Time?
After reading this chapter, how will you pray differently for yourself?
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