KNOW THE WAY AND OBEY

KNOW THE WAY AND OBEY
May 11, 2018

Prayer: Lord, we have slipped so far from what You would have us do and know. We are willing to see our error today and change. Please, help us. Thank You. Amen.

Scripture: Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. Joshua 1:7 NIV

We had experienced a particularly cold winter in Colorado with an abundance of snow for our area. Snow that usually melted in the warm sun within a few days, piled up week after week with overcast skies that continued to dump blankets of snow on us. So imagine my surprise one February afternoon, when I saw a man riding around town with his convertible top down! I quickly glanced at the outside temperature gage in my car which read 39 degrees. BURRRR!

It was a beautiful day, the first in many days. The sky was blue and the sun was shining and making the snow sparkle on the ground. It might have been a nice day for a walk wearing your coat – but spinning around town added a wind chill to an already chilly temp. This made me think this guy was more desperate for spring than I was. Later in the day, I ran into someone wearing shorts. “Aren’t you freezing?” I asked. “It’s all relative” he replied. “Compared to the past six weeks, this is a heat wave!” Now friends, I know that I am from the south, and what might seem warm to you is still a little chilly to me, but seriously, 39 degrees is not a heat wave.

Of course to these people, it was relative, they were comparing it to the bad and worse days we had experienced and therefore defined it as warm. I guess that is fine, as long as you do not catch a cold, but what about when it comes to our behavior and values? Do you hear students or even adults, try to justify bad behavior by comparing it to other people’s worse behavior? Have you ever heard someone say, “Well so-and-so does this, and so-and-so does that,” when you reprimand a behavior? As I was standing outside a school with a staff member from that school, I was shocked at the amount of cursing I heard from the students around me. I looked at her in disbelief expecting her to discipline the offenders, but she just shrugged her shoulders and said, “It is the language of our culture. These words are mild compared to what I usually hear.” I could not believe my ears! The language of whose culture? Not mine! I read the code of conduct book and I am sure it said, “No cussing.” Since when does “NO” mean that it is permissible, even acceptable, as long as you are not the worst of the worse? Obedience is not relative. You are either obedient or disobedient. Lack of obedience, including not doing something you were told to do, is disobedience. Do you agree? If not, how do you justify your answer? This could be a tough moment in your group, as you hold each other Biblically accountable. Growth is good and it will make you stronger.

Have we become numb to some things that should still shock us? Do you allow students to get away with behavior that you should discipline because compared to others students it is really not that bad? Is it because we have gone down this path of letting them get away with it for so long that we would be a raving discipline maniac all day if we held soundly to the rules? How then do we look at, “Thou shall not” in the Bible? Where is the line and how can we justify smearing it or pushing it a little here and there? Do you see evidence in our society of rules and laws becoming relative because the worse offenders are so much more extreme? Have we become like the guy in the convertible, in that we have learned to take the unacceptable and make the best of it because it might not get any better? If this is your school, city or even home, how do we take back control? How do we start pushing back to teach this generation that “No means NO” and not “I’ll look the other way?” I think it begins when we take an honest look at our own lives and see where we are justifying behaviors that we probably would not do if we could see the God who spends every moment with us. We must be the example first and then lovingly teach and hold tight to the rules and laws, extending forgiveness but with discipline. Don’t look the other way, show them the way.

My prayer for you is that you would know the way and obey to show the way.