We have five kids. (I know, I know… that’s a lot of kids and coffee in one home). But one of our parenting mantras is “In our family, we obey all the way, right away, and with a happy heart.”
Now that our eldest twins are almost teenagers, we’ve been saying this phrase for well over a decade. As you can imagine, with seven humans living under one roof, we all (including mom and dad!) can have a hard time learning to obey God’s Word and His statutes.
The Reason for Obedience
Sure, obedience is needed to avoid an immense amount of chaos that having five kids can bring, but we mostly use it as a way to teach our children that obedience is one way to honor God and abide in His love.
From an early age, we teach our toddlers to obey us “right away.” We do this so that they have the skillset to listen to their parents’ voices when they’re in danger. This allows us to respond quickly, so they don’t get hurt.
We ask our children to obey us thoroughly, “all the way,” so that they can learn to complete tasks. Our hope in this is that others don’t have to go behind them and finish the task, or they don’t have to go back and learn the lesson all over again.
And we ask our children to obey with a “happy heart.” Begrudging obedience is simply behavior modification. Like our good and heavenly Father, we care more about their hearts and character development than we do blind obedience. We want them to learn that doing the right thing with the right attitude shapes their heart in ways that begrudging obedience cannot.
In other words, we’re using obedience as a way to love our kids well and help them live a life that honors God. We’re not using it as a punitive tool to control them. Instead, it’s an invitation to a way of life that will ultimately bless them and help them love God, themselves, and others well.
The Loving Results of Obedience
Obedience gets a bad rap in our individualistic culture. Phrases like “You do you!” or “You gotta do what feels right to you!” have made their way into our everyday vocabulary. In addition, we’ve all seen examples where humans have used the good gift of obedience in harmful ways to control and abuse their victims.
Where society tells us to do what feels right or to use obedience as a means for control, Scripture provides an invitation to obey as a way to abide in God’s good and perfect love.
The Encouragement of Obedience
Our SOAP passage today states:
“Just as the Father has loved me, I have also loved you; remain in my life. If you obey my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.”
God’s Word tells us that obedience and love go hand in hand. In fact, obedience is the key to abiding, or remaining, in his love! Obedience isn’t the key to a dogmatic form of control, but it’s an invitation to live a life transformed by redemption. It’s about God loving and redeeming humanity through giving them an invitation to abide in Him, to trust that His ways are better than theirs, and to live a life of obedience as a way to love God and love others.
So maybe, like me (or my kids!), you sometimes bristle at the idea of obedience. I pray that this passage serves as a balm to your heart and reminds you that obedience isn’t a way of religious control. Instead, it’s an invitation to live a life that abides in the very goodness of God’s love for you and all of mankind.
