The time for obedience is Now, not Then

I love my church, East Rock Community.  One thing I love about our people and our leadership is the commitment to be real with one another.  Though my prayer is that we will go far deeper in this commitment, I'm encouraged that we're headed in the right direction.  One way God is using us to cultivate an atmosphere of authenticity in our weekly gathering is with an open time of sharing & encouragement.  During this time, anyone can stand or speak up to share a need for prayer, to confess sin, or to share how they've witnessed God working in their life over the past week.  I love this time, particularly because it gives freedom to the Spirit in prompting anyone to speak, and it provides opportunities for us to encourage one another or lay hands on another in prayer (nothing breaks me more than seeing a crowd of people gathering around another to support him or her in prayer!).  I love this time also because it reminds me that God is real, and regardless of how blind I may have been to see Him work in my own life over the past week, I'm always encouraged to hear how He's working in the life of a brother or sister.

Many times I've stood myself and testified of God's obvious power in my life over the past week, and I've been tremendously blessed to see how that testimony blesses another.  But last night (our church's weekly gathering is on Sunday evening), I balked out of fear, and my hesitance to share hindered another from being blessed by the confession I felt prompted to make public.  Oddly enough, my confession was to be one of fearing what people think of me.  My legs were tensed to stand, my Bible open, and yet my wicked heart restrained me to my seat in the pew, and my mouth remained closed.  We began to sing, the song of which I forget, though I remember lyrics along the lines of "surrendering everything to follow Jesus."  I felt I was singing a lie, and that started tearing me up.  My adversary continued to wail on me, telling me I would never change, telling me I'd missed that opportunity and so now would never be healed, telling me I was unworthy to sing before my King.

In part, he was right.

"Unworthy to sing before King Jesus" was God's honest truth, spoken by a devil.  But he was only half right, and half victorious.  For in the subsequent battle, God's Spirit told me that yes, I had been disobedient.  Yes, I had missed a great opportunity to make my need known to His people, missing an opportunity for any of them to respond with prayer or encouragement.  Yes, my disobedience does warrant condemnation, & does warrant being cast out of the presence of a holy sinless God Almighty.  "But God..."

But God in His Spirit revealed a precious truth.  I had been disobedient then, but His power still resided in me, sealed by the blood of Jesus dying in my place for my sins, and there was NOW a new opportunity for obedience.  I had made the wrong choice 30 seconds ago, but a new choice was being presented to me NOW.  As much as I wanted to change what happened THEN, His refrain was "today is the day of salvation."  And so in my "today," in that "now", by His power I chose obedience, and I pursued my pastor at the front of the building to ask for his prayer.  And in that moment, there was victory, and I was able to forget myself for the rest of the evening, lost in the precious grace of my Savior.

 

Oddly enough, we opened the Word to Mark 14.  Peter, James, & John, Jesus' closest friends, fell away and fell asleep, deserting Him in His painful hour praying in Gethsemane.  But Jesus went to the cross for them still. He knew beforehand that they would fall away and even told them that, and yet He stilll went to the cross for them.  Later on, however, they "got it", and they chose rightly to obey.  I hear the enemy's lies all the time, and he often likes to take an obvious failure of mine and remind me of it over and over again till I feel sick. satan may be beating you up now over something you've done 10 years or 10 seconds ago, but the truth is that now is the acceptable time to obey, and now God's power is available to you and me, purchased by Jesus' blood (2 Corinthians 6:2)