Feb 28, 2009

That kind of obedience

Mike Dellosso is right to be amazed by the radical obedience of many people in the Bible. Noah and Abraham, whom he mentions, are great examples.

The Bible is always talking about people who obeyed God even when it didn't make any sense. We celebrate people like this, don't we? Don't we tell our children that Abram was right to leave his homeland and follow the instructions of a God no one had heard of? Don't we tell our children that Noah was right to build a giant boat on dry land? And at Christmas, don't we all love that Joseph believed Mary when she said that the baby was a gift of the Holy Spirit?

The thing is, in real life, we would never advise our children to do these things.

So what kind of obedience does God expect from us? Mike has some thoughts on this.

Last week we learned about Noah and yesterday about Abraham. Talk about two men I want to be like. Both were asked by God to do incredibly irrational things. God told Noah it was going to rain, that water was going to fall from the sky (until then it had never rained) and that he should build a ship because the world was going to be flooded. God told Abraham to pick up his family and leave their home city of Ur and go . . . somewhere else, but didn't tell him where.

Okay, when I'm preparing for these lessons I try to put myself in the shoes of the person in the spotlight. In this case Noah and Abraham. How would I act if I were either of these guys?...READ MORE