Friday 13 January 2012

Positive Obedience

I'm reading a book at the moment called, The Obedience Option. It's about obedience, which surprised me as I thought it was a spy novel. I guess sometimes titles and their books match up.

One of the points the writer makes is that obedience is primarily about choosing God's glory above anything else. And this may be an old and basic concept for many of you guys, but it was pretty revolutionary to me. Not that I couldn't have guessed it seeing as everything is about God's glory, but the idea that when I choose to obey God, I am actively choosing to glorify him, that's a big deal. Often I have viewed obedience in the negative, obedience is not choosing to do the sinful thing I feel like doing. And then I go from there to give myself positive reasons why obedience is a good idea (e.g. because sin hurts people, it makes God sad, it's why Jesus died, I might get put in jail). Sometimes I even have the idea that obedience feels better, in the long run, but when you're staring temptation in the face, it's hard to believe that. However when I view obedience as an active choosing of God's glory, it becomes for me a much more exciting prospect. Obedience stops being about me and starts being about God. I love God, and I love to glorify God, so getting to actively choose to glorify him, to do something that makes him look good, that's exciting. I'd rather be obedient because it's good, than not be disobedient because that's bad. And glorifying God is the best, so that's the best.

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