I Want Your Obedience Not Your Flowers!

Last week my girls had a day off of school. It was a beautiful fall morning. The breeze was flowing and the sun was shining. The girls and I rode our bikes to the park. We had a good morning. When we were on the way back my youngest decided she didn’t really want to leave and I was trying to encourage her to stay focused. Instead of trying to leave she started finding weeds that resemble flowers and picking them to give to me. It was sweet, and at first I kept saying “Thank you, now let’s go.” She’d move a couple of inches and then find me more flowers. I started to get frustrated. She started to get caught up in finding me more flowers. “We’re leaving!” I tried a different approach. Finally after getting quite frustrated with her I found myself saying, “I want your obedience not your flowers!” I was trying so hard not to squish what she was doing yet when it came down to it she wasn’t obeying what I was saying. In a sense her heart motive was sweet because she was trying to bless me, but she was still being disobedient. She started to follow me after that and I did end up with an assortment of weed flowers.

After this incident I started to think about this as it compares to our relationship with God. King Saul in 1 Sam 10-13 has a similar moment with God. God tells him to go into battle and wipe out an entire place. He says not to even leave the animals. Well, Saul obeys God….for the most part but he keeps the animals to sacrifice it to God. He doesn’t really listen to God. He sorta listens and then does his own thing. This get’s God really upset and thus is when King Saul looses the favor of God on his life.

Now yes, we live now under the New Covenant. Meaning, Because of Jesus when we mess up in life, we can plead the blood of Jesus and it’s not like one little mistake is going to make us loose His favor. However, thinking about this story how many times have we found ourselves doing similar things in our own lives?

When God tells us to do something, that’s what He wants us to do. He doesn’t want us adding to it. He doesn’t want us to do what we think is best, but to do what He said. Things don’t always make sense to our own minds, but we just have to do it. He sees our tomorrows and for whatever the reason He knows. We have to trust Him. It can be very frustrating leading a child to do something and they keep getting distracted. Do we really want God frustrated with us?

Life is so short. God knows how to lead us to where is best for us to go. But we have to trust Him. We have to do what He says. Remember He has awesome plans for your life. So