"...bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ..."
-2 Corinthians 10:5
Our human nature loves control. God wants us to use that control to force our mind into obedience.
Colin came home from a Spirit-filled night at our church with this tough nugget of wisdom. Sometimes, if not all the time, we forget that that gentle prodding in the right direction is actually our Savior, a Spirit who has emotions... And the greatest emotion He has for us is love.
Here's the important question... Are we unwittingly stiff-arming our loving Savior?
We need to realize when we are being controlled by our human nature, and we need to be discipline enough to recognize when God wants us to listen to Him.
Sometimes it looks like completely sacrificing your pet sin, but we have to remember that "obedience is more acceptable than sacrifice."(1 Samuel 15:22) Are you fervently obeying the will of God, fully in-tune to His quiet voice so that whenever He says move, you move? Or whenever He says not to move, you stay still?
Or are you futilely sacrificing everything, quitting "cold turkey" whenever you get caught dabbling in sin?
Colin and I had a tough start to our relationship. It was all about the physical, and not at all about the emotional, spiritual, or other more important things.
Somewhere at our six-month mark, we began to feel like God was telling us to break up. At the time, however, we felt it was our own idea, and that we had a choice whether or not to do it. Whether or not to "sacrifice" our relationship on the alter of our Lord, so to speak.
One morning, about one year into our dating relationship, it became very clear to me that God was asking me to obey Him, not sacrifice on my own accord. And to not give up Colin would be to disobey my Father in heaven.
God said to me, "I want all of you. And since Colin was so much a part of you, you had to give him up in order to completely be a part of me."
Obviously, the Lord is good and brought us back together, but not before we realized that God was number one and WOULD NOT have any idols before him. Colin and I stopped kissing and embarked on a spiritual journey together, following Jesus and Him only. And praise God, we got married at the end of it all.
There is no way of knowing what kind of relationship Colin and I would have now if we had not obeyed God first and foremost back then. But I do know this, if I hadn't of gone through that process, Colin would be my number one, not Jesus, and my heart would be in a whole mess of trouble.
Your obedience to the will of God definitely won't be the same as ours. I'm not saying you need to stop kissing your boyfriend/girlfriend and everything will be better. God is in charge of all that.
What I am saying, though, is it is worth it in the long run to listen and obey the voice of the Lord.
What is the last thing He told you to do?
"But the determination and zeal are found in obeying God, not in the inclination to serve Him that arises from our own undisciplined human nature." -Oswald Chambers in My Utmost For His Highest
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