The Lost Art of Obedience

"A boy can learn a lot from his dog: obedience, loyalty, and the importance of turning around three times before lying down."

One day while exiting a store I saw a woman entering the store while scolding her crying son. Umm, maybe I should rephrase that scolding part because it was more like threatening her 8-year old boy.

"If you don't quit your crying and misbehaving you will be cut-off from all technology for the entire weekend!", the mother exclaimed.

Yep, that's how it's done today. The ultimate punishment, take away their electronic devices and punish them into reading a book. Has anyone else noticed how much obedience and respect has disappeared from our culture?

  Oh how parents probably long for the days when all you had to do is just give your kids the look or the stare down and how quickly things fell back into place. In days of future past we were taught to obey and show proper respect to adults, policemen, teachers and anyone else in authority. We were simply taught obedience is a sign of respect.

Just recently I caught the film Sudden Death, an action film that stars martial arts expert Jean Claude Van Damme. The film takes place in a Pittsburgh hockey arena during game seven of the Stanley Cup playoffs. Van Damme plays a fire inspector for the stadium and gets 2 tickets to the game and brings his son and daughter. Once dad places his children in their proper seats, he tells his 12-year old son to watch his sister and then wags his finger in his son's face telling him,

"Do not leave your seat for the entire game! I don't care if the building comes crashing down, stay in your seat!"

Little did Van Damme know at the time that the arena was filled with explosives from terrorists who have taken the Vice President of the United States hostage in one of the skyboxes.

Van Damme's son picks on his little sister during the game and she runs off to the bathroom on her own and eventually ends up as a hostage too.  While Van Damme discovers what is happening with the terrorists, he begins to search the stadium for the bombs and begins to defuse them one by one. At the end of the story one of the bombs attached to the scoreboard suddenly goes off and the crowd and hockey players franticly disperse wildly to the exits.

Naturally, as any action hero film goes: the bad guys are caught, the rest of the bombs are difused, and the Vice President is safe. When Van Damme goes into the seating section of the arena to find his son, lo and behold, his son is still sitting in his seat and exclaims,

"See dad, I didn't leave my seat. I obeyed you. I did not leave my seat.!"

Obedience is an act of faith. Disobedience is the result of unbelief. Van Damme's son had so much faith in his father he obeyed him until the very end, no matter what the situation. The father-son relationship between the two of them was a relationship built on trust. Where there is trust there is obedience.

With our culture changing ever so rapidly and Christians modifying God's Word to fit into today's society so we don't offend anyone, sadly obedience has truly become a lost art. It's as if some Christians have sunk so beneath themselves that their disobedience to God's entire Word has brought them to an end result of unbelief in God's Word. Oh if they only knew how God's Word really works! Such as this story that quickly went viral this week:

Praying for the sick and they shall recover took on new meaning and enlightened the world the other day. On a recent flight from Atlanta, world renowned quarterback-turned-evangelist Tim Tebow prayed for a  passenger who was being medically attended to after the man collapsed from a heart attack.
As medical staff on board the flight worked on the man and struggling to revive him, Tebow prayed over the gentleman and he would then come to and recover. All Tebow did was obey God's Word and put it into action kind of like the Apostle Paul.


 For I will not dare to speak of any of those things which Christ has not accomplished through me, in word and deed, just to make the Gentiles obedient-  (Roman 15:8)

Paul chose not to threaten the Gentiles into obedience, but rather let his life and his actions in obedience to God's Word have the final say. And of course, those miracles they saw through Paul's obedience would lead some to repentance.

Obedience is an act of faith. And when you put it into practice in your daily life you will see miracles.