Obedience Is Better Than Convenience

Author: Andy Dragos

If you’ve been in church circles at all, you may be familiar with the words, “to obey is better than sacrifice.”  They’re taken from a passage in 1 Samuel 15 where one of God’s prophets has to chastise king Saul for being well intentioned in doing something for God, but completely disregarding the instruction he received against that specific action!  The lesson learned in this passage seems to be obvious: to obey God’s purposes for our lives is the most important thing you can set your heart on.  When God tells you something, do it—even if you have something else in mind that you may consider of great value for him.  The key to not making the same mistake as Saul is trusting that God knows what he wants better than you do! (Sounds like common sense doesn’t it?)

In that passage we’re warned that doing things for God doesn’t make up for what we’re doing wrong.  Going to church on weekends, singing in choir, being active in your community…even reading your Bible and praying doesn’t count for anything when there are areas of our lives we’re not handing over to God.

Well, there’s something else that we’re especially prone to because of the culture we live in.  We hear about it all the time, and yet somehow we manage to repeat the same mistake time after time!  Our mortal sin: falling prey to the busyness of our lives.  By now you’ve probably heard enough about how tech-savvy we are and how technology has the potential to ruin the beautiful things in life.  I’m sure you don’t need to be reminded about us being a fast-food, fast-paced, “microwave” society—others have ranted on about this for quite some time now.  But one thing we all need to be reminded of is that from an eternal perspective, obedience is better than convenience.  Our culture advises us to obey our cravings, ambitions, drives, (Sprite even tells us to obey our thirst!) but obeying God is the only way you can’t go wrong.  Ephesians 1:11 assures us that he has a special will and purpose for our lives.  Now the ball is in our court; are we going to let God have his way in us by clearing up the mess we call our “schedules?”  The irony of convenience is that when we can do something quicker and easier, we tend to stock-pile our lives with even more tasks.  And all along the purpose of technology is supposed to be the freeing up of our time.

It’s time we realize that obedience to God is more valuable than convenience.  It’s time we turn our cell phones off during the moments we consider sacred.  It’s time our social networks take a backseat to our communion with God.  It’s time we get out into nature and be reminded of our creator’s greatness.  It’s time we decide that what’s important takes priority over what seems to be urgent.  “The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.” 1 John 2:17 (TNIV)  Don’t let yourself be driven by convenience for one moment longer!