“You show that you are my intimate friends when you obey all that I command you. I have never called you ‘servants,’ because a master doesn’t confide in his servants, and servants don’t always understand what the master is doing. But I call you my most intimate friends, for I reveal to you everything that I’ve heard from my Father.” (John 15:14–15, TPT)

Obedience. It’s something that we (hopefully) have learned and practiced since childhood. Parents, teachers, and coaches alike condition children to obey through rewards and recognition. I don’t know about you, but I was a fairly compliant child. Except when I wasn’t. I found it easy to obey when there was something in it for me—a sticker on my chore chart, allowance, and good grades. But if there wasn’t a motivating factor with a shiny prize at the end, I didn’t always want to obey. Maybe you can relate, friend?

Obedience is not just about our outward behavior. For me, as a child, I obeyed when I felt like it and usually to avoid getting into trouble or to earn a reward. But it usually wasn’t motivated by a heart full of love. It was actually rooted in fear of being “bad” or doing things wrong. A child who obeys to avoid punishment or negative consequences may for all intents and purposes appear to be a child who is kind and gracious. But God knows our hearts. And friends, my heart was very sick. I found it much more convenient and appealing to obey when I wanted to and then lie when obedience wasn’t appealing. You can only imagine how exhausting that was!

Friends, obedience is not meant to be painful or to catapult us into suffering. In fact, it is quite the opposite. Our God is a God of love, peace, and kindness. Everything He asks us to do He was willing to do himself. Our Savior is the perfect example of obedience. He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross (Phil. 2:8).

Although obedience was never meant to painful, it often can be—because we are humans and struggle to remember that our flesh has been crucified with Christ (Gal. 2:20). Jesus’ obedience brought Him to death on the cross. Likewise, our obedience will lead us to death—the death of our flesh and our selfish desires. We are a forgetful people, and we fail to remember that we walk in new life with Him. When the enemy attempts to trap us into thinking that our flesh and our own ways are better, we can believe the lie that God is not for us.

Disobedience stems from a root problem of unbelief. If we believe that God is good and that He is for us, we will gladly and gratefully respond to His great love with obedient and willing hearts. But we often take His love for granted, and our rose-colored lenses prefer to see that our ways are somehow more effective and beneficial than His perfectly sovereign plans for our lives.