Obedience

Obedience..it's been a theme in my life these last few days. I really want to be obediant to God but to be honest, I didn't really know how so, I looked up the definition of Obedience and it literally means "Dutiful or submissive compliance". Not exactly what I thought it meant but, perhaps that's because a lot of the time I think of obedience as an option when it's so clearly not. We are supposed to obey God all the time, not just when it's convenient for us or when it comes easily. This week God has revealed the me the obedience in the story of Abraham being tested in Genesis 22. If you haven't read it for yourself I recommend it but, the basically the story is that God calls to Abraham and tells him to go up on some mountain and sacrifice his only son Isaac and Abraham just packs up his stuff and goes! Verses 9-10 say "When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an alter there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son." Awesome picture right? Now if you know the story you know that because of Abraham's faithfulness to God, God didn't make him go through with the sacrifice of his son but, the obedience of Abraham here is really what's beautiful to me. God said, kill your only son and Abraham loaded up his donkey and left. He didn't say "Hey God, look I really love Isaac and my wife is kinda old and I just would rather not" he just went and got as far as having the knife in his hand! He was so obedient and had God not called out to him I feel sure he would have killed his son. That is the kind of obedient I want to be but, instead of me just doing what God asks I often refuse to do the most simple tasks all because they aren't really what I want to do right then but, the fact of the matter is obedience is not an option! Just as Abraham demonstrated, we must be obedient no matter what God tells us to do.