George MacDonald was a Scottish poet and theologian who lived and wrote in the 1800’s. His poignant writings were a great influence on J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and many others. MacDonald wrote the following on the importance of obedience:
“Simply to do what we ought, is an altogether higher, diviner, more potent, more creative thing, than to write the grandest poem, paint the most beautiful picture, carve the mightiest statue, build the most worshipping temple, or dream out the most enchanting commotion of melody and harmony.”
That’s perhaps a more poetic way of saying what Samuel did to Saul in I Samuel: “To obey is better than sacrifice.” God wants obedience from us, more than He wants many of the other things we would prefer to offer Him instead. In fact, God brings situations into our lives to help us learn to obey Him by faith. Hebrews 5:8 says of Jesus, “Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered.” Jesus learned to obey the Father in every situation that was presented to Him in His earthly life – and we are presented with those same kinds of opportunities. God uses our life situations to teach us to obey Him by faith.
Psalm 119:57-64 teaches us much about obedience. As you may know, Psalm 119 is an acrostic – the first word in each eight-verse section of the Psalm begins with the same letter of the Hebrew alphabet. (Many of your Bibles will have the sections labeled “Aleph”, “Beth”, etc., and ending with “Tau”, which are the names of the Hebrew letters.) Additionally, you can often see in each section of 8 verses, some kind of theme. The theme of :57-64 is obedience. We learn a number of things about obedience from these verses: Continue reading
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