Culturally Irrelevant

Jesus says that we remain in the Father’s love through obedience (check out John 15). Complete obedience is our anchor to the Father’s love. As we obey the word, we begin to experience God’s love and become like him. Through continued obedience, his plans for us reach maturity and become powerful in our lives. However, we can know everything there is to know about the word and yet still remain under the control of our flesh and Satan’s devices if we are unwilling to obey what we’ve been told to do. Another word for willful disobedience is rebellion. When we know what we should do but willingly rebel against the truth, we are literally turning away from God. It doesn’t matter if we’re in church every Sunday. Ask the members of the Laodicean church what God thought about their church attendance, giving record and knowledge of the word (Revelation 3). Our obedience let’s God circumcise our hearts. It’s how he cuts away the extra flesh that desensitizes us and makes our spiritual understanding dull.

Abraham talked to God a lot. We like to think of talking to God as this really awesome and charismatic thing. And it is. But it’s also a painful thing, mainly because so much in us needs to change to become like him. In Genesis 12, God tells Abraham to leave his home and everything familiar to seek a land he’s never seen. In chapter 17, God tells him to circumcise himself and all of the males in his house. Ouch. And then in chapter 22, God tells him to sacrifice his son as a burnt offering. Is it just me, or does talking with God seem painful and costly?

Abraham was able to obey completely because he trusted God. Hebrews 11:19 tells us that Abraham didn’t worry about losing Isaac because he reasoned God would just raise him from the dead if necessary! What was God doing through all of this? Yes, he was taking him on a very practical journey to find a land of promise, build a family and gain wealth. But none of that mattered at all without trust, righteousness and love. God had Abraham on a journey of the heart, continually testing him and telling him to do things that would remove more and more of his stubbornness, his doubt, his fear and any deep-seated mistrust. Why? So that Abraham could become more like God and actually hold the promises when they came, enjoy them and pass them on to Isaac and his sons.

When the Holy Spirit spoke to Katy and I last year, we began a journey of the heart that was years in the making. God spent years preparing our hearts to obey some hard things. Everything had its purpose and timing. He’s asked us to do some hard things recently that don’t make sense naturally. Give things away, sell stuff, pack without selling our house, take part in a church plant that’s spread out across 750 miles. Why? He’s got a good future for us in the natural, no doubt. But along the way he’s having us do it a certain way because he’s cutting away stuff in our hearts. We’re on a journey that can’t be seen in the natural. The “stuff” is really inconsequential. Houses, cars, jobs. They come and go…really…but there are more permanent things that determine all of that. Everything that happens in the natural follows what’s already going on in the spirit. And it’s critical for us to see this. That’s why Jesus says, “Seek first the Kingdom and all these things will be added to you.” It’s simple, really. But it can also be painful. How much heat can your heart take? It’ll be determined by how connected your heart is to the “stuff”. Ultimately, I’m asking “Which kingdom am I living in?” If it’s mine, then I better get everything here and now that I possibly can, and I’ll have to rely on my own understanding to get there. But if it’s an eternal Kingdom, then it’s got to be done God’s way. And that inevitably means I’m not always going to understand everything until I’m looking back on it. And trust me, we’ve looked back over the past year and realized that God knows exactly what he’s doing.