homeschooled by GOD – Lesson Three: Be Obedient
homeschooled by GOD: Lessons Learned in the Classroom of Life
new YEAR, new YOU
January 7th, 2022
Psalm 40:1-3, ‘I waited and waited, and waited some more, for God. At last, He looked; finally, He listened. He lifted me out of the ditch (the slimy pit), pulled me from deep mud. He stood me on a solid rock to make sure I wouldn’t slip. He taught me how to sing the latest God-song, a praise-song to our God. More and more people are seeing this: they enter the mystery, abandoning themselves to God.’
LESSON THREE: Be Obedient
As I previously shared, several years ago I found myself in a personal classroom much like a child who has been sent for timeout in a corner. After the Lord had rapped on the chalkboard of my heart, drawing out a picture of His love and grace for me, and detailing His instructions to me, ‘Trust Me, be obedient and let go’, He began erasing the hard lines my living had embedded in me.
He was so very patient with me, and still is, as He began teaching me about trust, my first homework assignment. In fact, today I still remind myself sometimes daily what trust means, which is ‘confident expectation of something [or in someone]’. In order to be able to confidently place hope and belief in something or someone, that something or someone must have inspired or earned my reliance. There is One, and only one, Who will always, always be fully reliant, dependable and trustworthy, and that is the Lord, the Professor I found myself homeschooled by. I find today that it is not a matter of whether I can trust Him, but whether I do. He has proven Himself over and over again, so my prayer has become that He would teach me to trust Him in whatever lesson or circumstance. Because it isn’t about whether He is trustworthy, but whether I will accept and walk in the confident expectation I now have due to His continued track record of trustworthiness.
He also instructed me that not only was I to trust Him, but I also was to be obedient. Obedient? I had not been obedient to anyone but myself for much of my life. I had many placations outwardly but inwardly I was an insolent, devious and mischievous child. What did obedience look like and what exactly was the Lord requiring of me? I had the end result He promised me—that He would rescue and raise me out of the murky pit I was sinking in; He would set me on a higher ground overlooking the mess He brought me out of; and He would put His Words in my mouth—but I first had to do my homework assignments. What did ‘being obedient’ mean and to whom?
Obedience, I found, is learned. It is intentional and chosen. It is just as simple to choose obedience as it is to choose disobedience, but the outcome and repercussions of both are often lifelong and vastly different one from the other. There is reward that accompanies obedience and discord which comes from disobedience. Sometimes the greatest reward for being obedient is to be able to look yourself in the mirror and see honor staring back at you. Emotionally, in addition to the cost, what comes with being disobedient is often guilt for what you’ve done or haven’t done and feelings of shame for who you are or who you are not.
Over time, eventually, being obedient became a lifestyle to me. It was not overnight. I had not gotten to where I was in my waywardness immediately, so I was not going to yield and acquiesce to devotion and respect quickly either. I learned my obedience first had to be to the Lord, and allegiance then to everything and everyone else would fall into place. What does that mean and what did that look like, you ask. Initially, when I was struggling to learn a fresh way to speak, a new language, a different response from how I always had done life in the past, I had to cautiously determine my actions and attitudes. I had been so comfortable in my life manipulating people and controlling outcomes that would best benefit me. In fact, on numerous occasions, I felt the shoulder tap from the Lord and inner nudging from the Holy Spirit to just be still and be silent and not try to fix outcomes or win determinations. One time, in the midst of what I knew He was requiring me to trust Him with and be obedient in, and what ultimately I had to let go of in order to move forward, I played one of my little games I always successfully and without remorse had played previously. Interestingly enough, I immediately felt conviction deep inside; I had been found out. I was manipulating results, and I had a sick feeling deep down inside, what I had done was going to cost me and perhaps my eventual outcome. Sure enough, while the Lord brought victory eventually, it is my belief that due to my trying to control an end result, it would be twice the effort and time to reach the final chapter.
When the Lord calls us to obedience, we must be fully obedient. The greatest truth convicting me today is that partial obedience is still disobedience. I praise the Lord for His homeschooling of me because He has taught me the importance and value of coloring inside the lines and therefore not blurring those same lines.
Proverbs 15:32, ‘An undisciplined, self-willed life is puny; an obedient, God-willed life is spacious.’ (MSG)
