The Lord sometimes brings scriptures to my mind despite my greatly lacking meditative life. It happened this evening as I was on the bus to City 7. The scripture in 1 Samuel 15 just suddenly came to me where Samuel told Saul that obedience is greater than sacrifice. I realized that this completely flips human thought on its head. Humanity says EXACTLY the opposite. And the vast majority of the time I MYSELF think this way! My Christian walk feels like a failure when I haven't done something great or been able to emotionally testify of God's great power in my life or give a great deal of money to a godly cause. It is so tempting to think to oneself "I must get out there because Jesus died for me to do GREAT things. I was bought at an exorbitant price so I must serve exorbitantly! I must SHOW the gospel to be true through GREAT acts of love and compassion and sacrifice! We equate God's great act at the cross with how great our love should be shown towards Him.
Indeed, our love should be great towards God! We should exorbitantly love Him! But we cannot and MUST not judge our spiritual progress by how greatly we have been sacrificing. We are not constantly provided with opportunities to sacrifice but we ARE constantly provided with opportunities to OBEY!
"We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commands," John the apostle says. He does not say "...if we sacrifice greatly and passionately." He says "if we obey." Just obey. Why is this so hard for us? Because we so deeply want the grandeur and hugeness of having sacrificed. It seems SO much more significant than mere obedience. God does not see it this way though! God loves it when you obey! It means so much more to Him than great sacrifice without obedience! God rejoices so much more when you simply stop watching a movie that's causing your mind to go places it shouldn't than when you have just given hundreds of dollars to a church or a Christian organization and then go and drink a few too many beers. We must get this through our heads! God is thrilled when we obey! He sings and dances because it is one of the ways our love toward Him is proven! So go your way today and obey! And know that God rejoices over your obedience!
