Loving Obedience

Read Deuteronomy 5:23-33

Thankfully, I have had only one speeding ticket in years. This one was about twelve years ago and it was because I was going twenty-nine in a twenty-five school zone. Can you believe that? Speed was such a concern for one mother in Colorado that she would go and sit in her car in front of an elementary school every weekday afternoon and point a hair dryer out her window at passing vehicles. Many drivers mistook the hand-held dryer for a radar gun and slowed down. Mission accomplished! The speed limit is posted in the school zone but it often takes the threat of punishment to make drivers obey the law.
Now, think about how you discipline or disciplined your child. Often, it is the threat of punishment that keeps us straight. I have been labeled a “goody-goody” when I was growing up. I was. I was that way, not because my sense of right and wrong was perfect. I wasn’t that way because I loved God so much that I never wanted to disappoint Him. I was that way because my dad has big hands and an even bigger belt. I was not one that needed several reminders of the pain inflicted to my hind parts in discipline. My cousin Dan – not so much – he was a little stubborn. Me, I was a wimp. I avoided punishment at all cost!!
Now, think about you and God. That's a sobering picture of us all, even in our relationship with God. Instead of an inner willingness to follow God, it may take the force of difficult circumstances to turn us toward Him. But that's not how our heavenly Father wants it to be. The Lord has always longed for His people to obey Him from their hearts. When the Israelites were poised to enter the Promised Land, Moses reviewed the Ten Commandments and then told them God's response to their intention to keep His law: "Oh, that they had such a heart in them that they would fear Me and always keep all My commandments, that it might be well with them and with their children forever!" (Deuteronomy 5:29).
God doesn't want us to obey Him just because we're afraid of punishment. He will honor obedience at whatever level, but He really longs for loving obedience that comes from our hearts. How about it? Are you trying to serve God just because you are afraid of His punishment because, like my dad’s love, He will chasten us from time to time, or do you obey because you love? Take a moment right now and measure your love for Him. As the old song says, “I keep falling in love with Him, over and over again.”

“The greatest blessing of our democracy is freedom. But in the last analysis, our only freedom is the freedom to discipline ourselves.”
- Bernard Baruch