Monday, January 23, 2006

Obedience

"Delayed obey is no obey."

This is a gentle reminder that can be heard at our home when there is hesitancy in obeying. I am often challenged by parenting "experts" when they express the need to expect obedience the first time an imperative is given. There are days when this happens in my house, and there are days when it does not.

Last night I was doing a little "self-examination" and struck by my own slow obedience towards God. Aha. Maybe this could be a contributing factor to the slow obedience problem with the children. I hate to admit it, but I have been dragging my feet about some issues that God has been placing His finger on, in my life. Although I have been wanting to change some of my bad habits, I have not been jumping at the opportunity to obey my Abba. Face to face with my rebellion, I had to bow in confession and contrition. I am so glad that I have an Abba that forgives. A lot of guilt was weighing me down and I hadn't even been realizing it.

Today, I am striving to be quick to obey His leading. It's amazing how much easier it is once I get over the initial attitude problem. I know that His commandments "are not burdensome" (1 John 5:3), but for some reason, when my attitude is rebellious they can seem that way. My prayer is that all of us will learn to be "quick obey-ers"... speedy to do as God asks us.

2 comments:

Homemanager said...

Hi Marlene,
Thanks for the post on obedience. It does seem that we all have areas that the Lord is challenging so that we can grow and train our children to walk even deeper than we have.

Modeling can be so hard. I'm finding that when I'm really failing, if I humble myself to my children, they not only encourage and remind me to walk rightly, but they pray for me. What an awesome God we have!

Blessings!

Sarah Fullerton said...

true words... we're working on quick obedience with Susanna right now (I'm sure we will be for a long time!), and I have to admit that it's hard for me to even be consistant about requiring it from her (she's also figured out that nursing time is the best time to disobey because I can't just jump up and discipline her right away)... good to remember my own need to learn quick obedience!

Yeah, we've gotten into a bad habit of getting to bed at incredibly late hours and then getting very little done in the morning hours... I read that post on GirlTalk after I had already decided I needed more discipline in that area, but it certainly spurred me on to actually do it... although I'm just aiming to be a member of a 6:30 club!:-)