#AbaMatinde: Respond in Obedience

#AbaMatinde 1 Respond in Obedience! by Daniel Carandang written by Ana Victoria Andres In this day and age, “obedience” is an unpopular word. It’s apparently uncool and inconvenient. For an instance, rarely would you encounter a person who does not bribe a  police officer when caught with a traffic violation. We think to ourselves, we get away with it anyways but later do we realize there are always repercussions to our actions. We think we’re avoiding inconvenience; short term yes but in the long run, it will only get worse. To further illustrate, let’s take a look at the book of Jonah;  “The word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before Me. But Jonah ran away from the Lord and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the Lord.” - Jonah 1: 1-3 And there you have it, a prophet deliberately disobeying his God. Why do you think Jonah was so afraid? It was said that the city of Nineveh at that time was in so much chaos and also that he had grown up hating the Assyrians. Perhaps he was afraid and perhaps because of his hatred, he did not want to them to come to repentance. Just like how most of us are, when the things God commands us to do become troublesome and uncomfortable, we often run away from Him and this reveals our lack of faith. Maybe it’s because our “faith” is based merely on what we’ll get from God and fail to realize that a big part of this is God’s Lordship over our lives. After all, if we truly believe that He is indeed our Creator, wouldn’t it be only reasonable for Him to dictate how we live and what we are to do? “Then the Lord sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. All the sailors were afraid and each cried out to his own god. And they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship. But Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep. The captain went to him and said, “How can you sleep? Get up and call on your god! Maybe he will take notice of us so that we will not perish.””- Jonah 1:4-6 Because God loves us relentlessly, He will continue to pursue directing us to the right direction despite our resistance and most of the time He uses “storms” in order to shake us up out of our stubbornness. When He does this, let us not harden our hearts and ignore Him. Instead, let us come to Him and RESPOND IN OBEDIENCE! If we truly believe that He is a sovereign God, then we should also believe with all our hearts that He only knows and wants what’s best for us and He’ll do whatever it takes, may it be through painful situations, to direct us to His path.  “The sea was getting rougher and rougher. So they asked him, “What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?” Pick me up and throw me into the sea,” he replied, “and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you.””- Jonah 1:11-12 When we disobey God, the consequences of this action not only affects us but others as well. We see this clearly in the verses above. We also see that Jonah voluntarily asked the men to throw him into the sea and it makes one think, did he do this to spare those that are with him or was this another attempt of his to escape from God? Either way it just shows that it’s really silly to think we can ever hide or run away from God. No matter how far we’ve ran away or no matter how shrouded we are in sin, it is never too late to come back to Him and as mentioned earlier, He will do whatever it takes to make you do so. “Now the Lord provided a huge fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.” - Jonah 1:17 Not only will God forgive you and welcome you back in His arms, He will also give you another chance. After getting delivered, Jonah was once again commanded to preach against Nineveh and this time, he obeyed the Lord. Despite their wickedness, the assyrians responded with repentance and we’re talking about almost 120,000 people here. Imagine how blessed one would feel being used to carry this out. This only shows that whoever we are, whatever we have done, God can still use us for His service.  It’s never too late. Run to God, not away from God.