Obedience As Identity - Key Principles Pt3

For years and years, I obeyed and followed Jesus because I was afraid of Him. Looking back on it, I’m not sure what I was afraid of because I could tell you what grace and mercy were and I could quote a lot of the Bible and I had a great family that showed me Jesus’ love in really deep ways. My past is not marked by physical or sexual abuse causing spiritual amnesia a split soul like some of my friends have experienced. I’ve been immersed in all things Jesus and church for what seems like forever.

But about five years ago, I began to come to the realization that I was terrified of God. What if he found out the kinds of things I was doing in secret? What if people at my church saw how I talked to my wife when it was just the two of us? How would I keep God on my side if He ever found out how often I didn’t follow Him? And to make it worse, I was a pastor. If anyone should have had it together, it should have been me.

I can remember sitting in a dark hospital room while Christy slept one night and wondering if God felt what was going on. I knew that God knew what was going on and He had everything under control and He was still on His throne and He is sovereign and all that jazz, but I wanted to know if He actually felt anything.

It was then that I realized that He wondered the same thing about me.

He knew that I knew that I loved Him and obeyed Him (usually, anyway) and that I was a pastor…but did I ever feel anything.

I had always equated submission and obedience to God with a need to separate me from myself, to step outside of the ugliness of who I was in order to do what He wanted. Why should I do what He wanted? Because He’s God and if I don’t do what He says, He’ll smite me.

Now don’t get me wrong, a deep part of that is true. Why obey? Because He’s God and what He says goes. At the end of all things, falling back on that is OK. The only thing is, that as a person grows up in Jesus, there comes a longing to know the Father more deeply than that, just like a child who is growing up. I have three kids, ages six, five and three. Because of their lack of growth and maturity – an inability to think and process abstractly – they must obey and I must ensure that they obey because my posture toward them is good, or at least it should be, and usually is – and their obedience to my will as it lines up with God’s will is the greatest highway they have to the face of Jesus.

And that’s the key to this whole obedience and following thing…that the heart of the Father toward His children is good. As my kids grow and mature in life, they will begin to experience me on new levels. Their questions of “Why?” are actually places that my heart and their heart can connect. A pre-teen or teenager initially pushes against her parents because they are the only standard by which she has to judge herself and her ability to be who her parents are forming her to be…a young lady on a road to her own destiny.

Submission and obedience to God is not about His control over your life.
The question of who is in control has an obvious answer.
God does not need to prove His ability to dominate you,
His sacrificial love is His domination.
God does not need your obedience to validate His existence.
He created and sustains everything.
God does not need your submission to love you.
His grace initiates this relationship.

God’s identity is so rooted in Himself and His Trinitarian nature that He is able to stand completely outside of His creation and be at joyful peace and rest in His own glory.

When your identity is rooted in Jesus and His loving nature, you can stand outside of yourself and be at joyful peace and rest in submission and obedience to His will, because it is His will that brings Him most glory, and God’s rest in His own glory is the most loving thing He can do for His children and the world.

The most freeing thing about all that stuff is that obedience comes as a fruit of being in Christ rather than a system of earning His love and favor. God’s love and favor rests on You because You are His child. He desires submission and obedience because it’s the only way He can love you to the depth that you were created to feel His love.

The more you submit and obey out of identity rather than fear, the more you feel the Father’s love. The more you feel the Father’s love, the more you feel the joy of obedience because obedience is who you are in Him.