As I travel around I often get asked if grace absolves us from being obedient to God. This of course is a very valid question especially in the light of so much being said that suggests that because of grace we can do whatever we want. I believe it is very important straight off that we all understand that if any one of us sees grace as a license to do as we please with no regard for oneself, others, and God then we have clearly not understood the grace of God at all.
What I mean is that if we see grace as a cheap excuse not to perform, then perhaps we see it this way because we are living from a place of performance. Our eyes of performance are rooted in our false self. In the place of performance, grace is seen as a free ticket. Grace becomes an insult to our ongoing striving for outward perfection. We need to also consider that active surrender does not sit well with a journey that is led by our false captain called the ego. Furthermore consider the fact that grace seen through our illusional eyes appears to remove all of our control and ability to manipulate life and God into working the way we think they need to for us to be happy and at peace. Finally take some time to further consider that ultimately a journey that is based on right and wrong, heaven and hell, and God and the devil is a journey whose whole aim is to achieve a result at the end of it, thus preventing us from noticing the abundant and true life and relationship Jesus came to bring and offer all of us right here and right now.
True obedience is the automatic by product of a loving relationship with God. It is effortless and it flows in and through our lives when we understand how well we are loved on the road of grace. See it like an automatic switch that goes on within us as we focus on his love. When we try it the other way around we try and obey without the switch being turned on. This is the same as trying to drive a car without turning it on. To make it work it means us getting out and pushing the car. It means us doing for the car what the car was designed to do for us if we did things the right way around.
May it be that on that day when we look back on our journey that we are able to see that the path we chose led us to a place of blessing and not just to a place of busyness where all we did was take care of stuff that had already being done long ago before we even started trying to!
Give thanks this weekend that we have been given a chance to be able to obey!
-pablo-
Photo by Ben Heine
