My Evolution of Obedience

Although there have been ups and downs in the development of my closest friendships, I’ve remained committed to them because I am grateful for their faithfulness to me and their various acts of kindness over the years. Reflecting on my love for my closest friends brought me to thinking on the progression of my relationship with God. I know I have always loved God, but for the first three decades of my life, it was a love borne out of fear. Fear of being punished here on earth and fear of going to hell at the end of my life’s journey kept me on my toes.

 
I knew about God loving me, but I figured it was like my parents’ love, a great love that was evident when I made them proud but hidden when I was being disciplined. In retrospect, I realize now that I never internalized the fact that God sent Jesus to die for me as a unique or personal love for me given that His death was for the salvation of the entire world. I’m not sure whether to blame my parents or not, but somewhere along the line I developed and nurtured this excessive fear of God.

 
It wasn’t that I had not heard about that passage from the letter of Apostle Paul to the Romans reassuring them that nothing could separate them from God’s love. But it never connected with me in realistic terms. During this phase of my faith journey, being good meant answered prayers here on earth and heaven as my final destination. Being bad was the opposite. Of course, I wanted all my prayers answered. As often as I mentioned the word Grace during that period of my life, I apparently had no clue what it really meant.

 

As my kids became old enough to understand the basics of Christianity, I began to raise them with the same fear. How could they watch television upon waking up on Saturday mornings without saying their prayers? What if God caused them to go blind because they were putting something else or an activity before God? When I think of some of the things I said to those kids as I passed the fear on to them, my emotions go from laughing at the ridiculousness of some of my words to anxiety that my recent efforts to reassure them of God’s unconditional love in their adolescence has taken root.

 
My first inkling of unconditional love came when a few days after I had done something I knew was very wrong, I got a miraculous blessing that I could not have gotten ordinarily. I remember being pleasantly surprised that God could still be good to me. Soon after, I attended a benefit reception where I watched an AIDS patient approach the microphone on the podium. She began to sing and all she could get out were the words “Jesus loves me” in various tunes. It appeared she was trying to get other words out but was too emotional. Nobody ushered her away, she sang those words till she broke down in tears. I remember being moved by how someone who could understandably decide to dwell in self-pity choose instead to focus on God’s unique love for her.

 
Those two incidents marked the beginning of my evolution of obedience from a place of fear to obedience from a place of love and gratitude. The more I studied scripture, the more I read and heard about a fatherly and merciful love that was not dependent on what I said or did. A love that always welcomed me back even when I fell off-track like the prodigal son. I bought and read up books on the subject of grace. Reading about grace inevitably led me into mercy and I came to realize how a God who was good to me even when I didn’t deserve it prompted me to be nicer to people whom I felt deserved nothing from me.

 
But there was still that requirement to fear God. After all, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” How could I convert living in fear of God’s retaliation into a holy fear? It was confusing, I was to fear and revere God but also to love and obey His laws by choice, unrelated to a fear of what could happen if I did not do so. I was to keep in mind the wages of sin, but not let that be the driving force behind my love of God and obedience to His will.

 
I was not able to solve this personal dilemma until I began to make a conscious decision to cultivate my relationship with the Holy Spirit, by asking the Spirit to be a part of my daily activities from the minute I wake up and repeating that invocation for grace several times during my day. I have now come to see why the fear of the Lord is a gift of the Spirit. An intimacy with the Holy Spirit helped me to understand how even the least of my wrong choices actually hurt a God who was so good to me.

 
This revamped holy fear evolved through the opening of my eyes to living with an attitude of gratitude. In the same way I was grateful to my inner circle friends for their faithfulness and would do almost anything for them, I found myself not wanting to offend God in any way out of gratitude for His unconditional love. Simultaneously, I began to understand the passion and death of Jesus in a deeper and more personal way, I imagined my mortal sins as extra nails being driven into the palms of His hands.

 
My renewed consciousness of God’s love for me and desire to respond by pleasing Him does not mean that I am a saint. But it means that my conscience is driven by God’s Spirit and I am quick to realize when I go down the wrong path and return into God’s loving arms. If I am able to make concerted efforts to avoid taking my friends for granted, why then would I take the love of a God who gave up His Son for my salvation for granted?
The more I experienced God’s goodness, grace and mercy upon my family, the more my heart was filled with gratitude.

 

This is what I understand as ‘Experiential knowledge’. My day-to-day experiences have not always been what I desired but my grateful love has increased even during difficult and turbulent times because I have learnt to be grateful for the smallest blessings and to keep things in perspective. I also bear in mind that while my friends can and have disappointed me from time to time, God has never failed me even when my prayers were seemingly not answered at any time. Down the line, I have always been privileged to recognize that challenging circumstances always worked out for my greater good.

 
Remembering how special I was to my late dad has also helped me as I have now connected with the fact that my dad’s love for me is nothing compared to God’s awesome love for me. I have always known that theoretically, but it took a while to sink into me and be translated into my interpretation of everyday events. So while I had loved and feared my dad and strove to please him out of fear, I was never meant to fear God that way. My gratitude for this divine, immeasurable and unconditional love has finally changed my mindset and all I want to do these days is respond with love, by taking extra care to avoid displeasing He who is the source of all the good in my life.

The test of our love for God is our obedience to Him. 2 John 6: And this is love, that we walk after His commandments….