Obligation or Loving Obedience?

The Lord is compassionate and gracious,
    slow to anger, abounding in love.

(Psalm 103:8 NIV)

My Bible Recap plan had taken me to the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah, a voice of gloom and doom, if ever there was one. I must admit that I was not looking forward to reading Jeremiah, or his “Gloom and Doom 2” of Lamentations. The words God speaks through Jeremiah to his chosen but idolatrous people are harsh, harsh, harsh. I mean, when you read something like this, it’s hard to have any hope for the situation: [God says] “Although they fast, I will not listen to their cry; though they offer burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Instead, I will destroy them with the sword, famine and plague.” (Jeremiah 14:12 NIV) Who wants to hear that God won’t listen to their prayers or offerings and will completely reject and destroy them?!?

Because I had read through the Bible in the New International Version last year I was reading the Amplified Version this year. The Amplified Bible doesn’t try to be pithy and easily-readable as much as it tries to give you context and nuance. So the above verse reads a bit differently in the AMP: “Though they fast, I will not hear their cry; and though they offer burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them [because they are done as obligations, and not as acts of loving obedience]. Instead I will consume them by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence.” (Jeremiah 14:12 AMP). When we read that God rejects the people’s prayers and offerings because of the state of their hearts, God’s seeming abandonment is seen through a different light. And this is where God caught me.

I had been struggling to keep up with my Bible Recap plan this year, not because I can’t do the daily readings, but because that’s basically all I’ve been doing – reading. Only reading doesn’t necessarily give a person space to ponder, to savor, to think and pray intently about a passage. Sometimes a surface reading is enough, but more often than not, God has more “under the surface” that he wants to say to us – through deeper readings, commentaries, or through our own Holy Spirit-led meditation on a passage. For me, I realized that my Bible reading had become obligatory, not an act of loving obedience, as this verse spoke. I had to repent and change my approach to the precious and living Word of God. If I wanted to hear God speak, I couldn’t be running (or reading) so quickly that I miss his Voice.

Perhaps you, too, are stuck in a spiritual discipline or routine that needs to be adjusted. If so, pause in God’s presence and ask, “What would you have me to do, Lord?” Perhaps it is to ask for a new revelation of God within what you’re already doing. Perhaps it is to stay on track, but shift slightly with a new Bible version or commentary. Perhaps it is a dramatic update to what you were doing. Perhaps it is to jettison the whole plan and just sit with God. Only you and God can work out what you need to do. But, hear again that God is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in love. If we seek him with our hearts, he will hear us and answer. He wants us to not seek him out of obligation, but out of loving obedience. And that makes all the difference.

Living, Loving God,

Thank you for your Word and your calling to meditate upon it. Thank you for the many ways in which we can study and learn your Word, but especially for Holy Spirit’s guidance. Help us to tune our spiritual ears and eyes to see and hear what you want us to know each time we encounter scripture. Help us to know how best to meditate on it so that our lives are lined up with your heart for us. Lord, speak to us, we ask in Jesus’s name, AMEN.

Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. (Joshua 1:8 NIV)