God gets to tell us what to do.

It doesn’t seem like a shocking statement. If our very existence depends on God and if God brought us into existence for the purpose of serving Him, it makes sense to say that He gets to come up with how we should serve Him. Every breath we have, every drop of strength comes from Him. It is therefore His right to give us whatever rules and laws that He wants to give us so that we can do what He created us to do.

But in spite of how blatantly obvious this seems to be, for many, it is an absolutely shocking statement.

Because, what if you don’t like what God is telling you to do?

The fact a lot of times at first you won’t. Sin has broken us and as a result we often want the very thing God hates and sometimes we want it so badly, that we are willing to make any excuse to do what we want, even stupid ones, like this, where we question the wisdom of God or even worse, the right that God has to make demands of us.

I think this is one of the fundamental differences in the way true believers view the world and the way most people in our culture look at things.

We believe God gets to be God.

It’s His job to make the rules. It is our job to obey.

And as Jonathan Edwards once put it, to do so, “without hesitating and complaining, whatever labor or expense he requires, whatever difficulties he requires us to go through, whatever pains and troubles he requires us to bear, how much soever he requires us to deny ourselves.”

Make sure you hear the, ‘how much soever.’

Because this is where it gets controversial.

Even if God asks us to do something that goes against what we believe is our very nature, it’s our job to obey. After all, what did Jesus say we should do, if obedience requires cutting off our right hand or plucking out our eye? Jesus said, obedience to God is more important than your eyeballs.

Do you believe it?