Every Sunday, my family drives to my grandmother’s house to have lunch with her and my aunts. On this particular Sunday, my mom was already there cooking, while my dad, brother, and I would follow after stopping by Dollar General. I had only been driving for a few months and had not yet received my learner’s permit, but my dad decided that it was safe enough for me to take us. It was not that far away, so to him, there was no harm.
However, the closer we got to Dollar General, my dad began to encourage me to continue driving. Turns out my mom had already bought groceries at the store, and all we needed to do was get on the highway and head to grandmother’s house. The problem was that I had never driven on the highway before, and I thought my dad would take over once we finished at Dollar General.
I did not think that I was ready and repeatedly told my dad so. All the while, he repeatedly told me to keep going. In the end, I turned into Dollar General’s parking lot and convinced my dad to drive the rest of the way.
While I thought that I was not ready to go on the highway, my dad clearly thought otherwise. Thinking back, is that not also true with most of the things God tells us to do? Whenever we feel that the Lord is pulling us in a certain direction, we dig our heels into the ground and shake our heads, determined not to obey. No matter what, our human nature tries to repel us away from the Lord’s wishes.
We are not the only people who are obstinate when the Lord gives us a command. One of the first people that comes to mind is Moses. When God appeared to Moses by way of the burning bush, He commanded him to go before Pharoah with the sole task of freeing the children of Israel from their bondage and delivering them to the Promised Land.
Moses gave any excuse he could not go through with it. He asked, “Who am I? … Who should I say sent me? … What if they do not believe me?” God immediately gave an answer to all his questions. He reassured Moses that He would stay with him, told him “I AM WHO I AM,” and instructed Moses with a list of signs and miracles to perform in order to convince the people that he was telling the truth.
But in the end, Moses still tried to weasel out by telling God that he was not good at speaking. Moses’ attempt to get God to send someone else failed as He revealed that Aaron, Moses’ brother, was coming to help him and be his speaker. With nothing left to protest against, Moses and Aaron went on to see Pharaoh and freed the Israelites from Egyptian captivity.
Another example of opposing God’s commands can be found in the book of Jonah. When God told Jonah to preach at Nineveh, he did not even try to give an excuse. The first chance he got, he ran away to a boat that would take him to Tarshish, the opposite direction of where he was commanded to go. It did not end well for Jonah, however, as God sent a whale to swallow and spit him out on dry land to get him to listen, even if he was not happy about it.
These two stories show that we can follow God’s commands the easy way or the hard way. Whether we think we are not ready or just plain obstinate, as Christians, we should do our best to listen to our Lord. It might be scary and unfamiliar at first, but we need to have faith in the plans that God has laid out for us.
As 2 Corinthians (KJV) 5:7 tells us, “For we walk by faith, not by sight.” And then there is Romans 10:17, “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”
