Obedience

If you love me, you will obey what I command.

Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him.

Jesus replied, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.

If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love.
(John 14:15, 21, 23-24, 15:10)

These are the words of Jesus, recorded in the Gospel of John. If you read these words and took them at their face value, you would think that obedience was very, very important to Jesus. And you’d be right.

It’s not just evident in this passage from John. It’s a major theme throughout the Bible. We all know this, at least in some way. Even those who don’t profess to be believers have this idea down. We constantly hear how Christianity is all about rules and following them. That’s by no means the whole story. But when even those outside of our beliefs know this, it ought be a clue to us that obedience is important.

In fact o-b-e-y is how God spells love. At least as far as our love for him.

But this goes so much further than simply obeying the commands of scripture. I do not want to downplay obeying God’s clear commands. Not at all. There’s a reason we are given those commands. To disobey them is to place ourselves in opposition to God, and to mess up our lives. God gave us commandments to help us—sin hurts us, and it keeps us from becoming more like God, which is his ultimate goal for us.

The clear commands of scripture are good, but obeying them should be a no-brainer for the believer. Obedience goes deeper than that. It goes to the level of obeying the Spirit at any moment.

Just this week, I had a chance to exercise this kind of obedience. I was driving home from work one day, when I felt a prompting to call a friend of mine. When the Spirit speaks to me, it is usually in this fashion. It’s not a great, booming voice. It’s a small prompting, or a new thought, usually telling me to do something, perhaps something unexpected, something a bit radical, or something I’d rather not do. This friend of mine has been going through some very tough times lately, and he has been expecting either good or bad news. I was pretty sure that if he had received good news he would have told me. So I never expected this to be the most pleasant of calls. I would either hear that he’d had no news, or bad news. But I have learned that when I hear that still, small voice to obey what it says.

So I called my friend and asked him how he was doing. Immediately I could hear in his voice that things were not good. He had received word just that day of a loss, one that was devastating to him. He hadn’t even yet told his wife.

Now, I wasn’t any great fount of wisdom for my friend. I didn’t know what to say. I still don’t know why he got this bad news and not the good news he was hoping and praying for. All I could do was to tell him I loved him and that I was praying for him. We talked for about 15 minutes, and while I could not change the nature of his news, still he felt better and stronger when we were done. This was none of my doing, but simply the good grace given by a friend who cares, who understands, who shares in struggles.

And I’ll let you in on a little secret: I didn’t want to make that call. As I said earlier, I didn’t expect good news. But I was obedient to what the Spirit told me, and it benefitted not only my friend, but me.

Now, I am no giant when it comes to hearing the Spirit speak. I have been blessed at times with hearing from God’s spirit. It doesn’t happen nearly often enough. And I frequently wonder if I do hear the Spirit at times, and just ignore it as one of the many thoughts that come to me. You may even say that this was merely a thought from my own mind. I won’t argue the point. It’s way too subjective for a good argument anyway. I will say that when I do listen, and when I am obedient, I’ve seen many, many good things come from that obedience. The longer I live, the more convinced I become not in just the reality of the Spirit speaking to us, but that he speaks a lot more than we listen.

How many times have I passed up the opportunity to help someone, to honor God, to lift up my own soul? Far too many to count, I fear. But I know that when I am obedient, when I do show God the love he deserves, I tend to hear the Spirit easier the next time.

Obedience. It’s how God spells love.

Another Short Foster Care Update

Thanks to all who have been praying for our foster son, R. He is doing very well. We have him in speech, physical, and occupational therapy. I'll bet you didn't know a 2-year-old could have occupational therapy. It's really about his fine motor skills. He really loves his speech therapist, who just happens to be our daughter-in-law. I think my son has a new rival for her affection . . .

R has also discovered that he likes attention very much, and is ready to pitch a fit if things don't go his way. Shan, acting on an idea from the occupational therapist, made him a little mat, which she carries in the diaper bag. Whenever R throws a fit, she gets it out and sits him on it. The consistency of being made to sit on the mat really lets him know he's in unacceptable territory.

His speech is really starting to improve, and he is starting to use sign language as well. That helps him communicate when the words just won't come.

We found out last week that the adoption agency got the official paperwork, and they are looking for a family for him now. We also discovered that there is one promising potential family for him. These folks will be in town over Thanksgiving weekend, and we will hopefully get to take R to meet them.

This whole process has been tiring, especially for Shan, who has R basically 24 hours a day. But she is a warrior and a great mother, and she is doing so much good for him.

We're praying that this will be the right family for him. We'll miss him, but that has been the whole point of fostering him—to give him a new family.

More Than Meets the Eye

The other day a couple of colleagues and I were talking about health care. It's a big topic these days. As part of the conversation, one of the men said he thought that overweight people just needed to be educated. He pointed to some of his in-laws who worked out at the gym but couldn't lose weight, "because they go home and eat donuts afterward."

Now, this man is a good person, and since this was a business relationship, I merely said that wisdom did not equate to intelligence. But I really wanted to say a lot more. Basically, he was saying that overweight people are either ignorant, stupid, or both. Following his line of reasoning, Nobel Laureates should all be very fit. They're not. Doctors should not ever have weight problems. But they do. And if his premise were true about overweight people, would it not also apply to alcoholics, smokers, drug addicts? Doctors, dentists, and nurses are particularly at risk for drug addiction. Is there any class of people who is more educated about the risks of drug abuse? I wanted to ask if another colleague, a very talented, bright, well-educated man with a severe weight problem were either ignorant or stupid. The obvious answer is "no."

Human behavior is far, far more complex than that. There are as many reasons for unhealthy behavior as there are people. We are all different.

But it is so easy to forget that. Hollywood sure doesn't help. All the successful, smart, happy people are good looking, fit, trim. Those Hollywood wants to make fun of are ugly, fat, stupid, or usually all three. For women it's many times worse than it is for men. The ideal female body image promoted in the media is so thin that only a starveling can qualify—unless of course the females in question have hyper-inflated breasts. We do cut them some slack for that. It has reached the point that even stick-thin models are Photoshopped to make them look thinner.

And we all do the same thing in our personal lives. It is very hard not to judge people based on their appearance. We tend to drop people into convenient categories—successful, old, thin, young, loser, beautiful, ugly, sexy, bald, alcoholic—you get the point. We look at the outside and decide instantly who is interesting, who is not, who is worthy, and who is a waste of time.

James talked about this, in terms of rich and poor, but it applies also to fat and thin, young and old, pretty or plain:

Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in shabby clothes also comes in. If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, "Here's a good seat for you," but say to the poor man, "You stand there" or "Sit on the floor by my feet," have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?
James 2:2-4

James doesn't pull many punches, folks. You can see what he calls this: evil thoughts. Just in case you didn't know, when the Bible calls something evil . . . that's a bad thing.
It is good to be fit. It's good to be free of addictions. It's good to be whole, and healthy, and strong, and emotionally stable. But everyone is coming from a different place. Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses, differing desires and dreams.

Everyone has a back story. Some stories are horrible. Some seem pretty normal to us. But everyone has some kind of wound, and if we knew the story, knew the wound, we might not be so quick to judge. But whether or not we ever hear the story, we know that there is more there than meets the eye.