The old hymn has a popular stanza that puts it this way: “Trust and obey, for there’s no other way, to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.” It is obvious, of course, that the more we trust, the more likely we are to obey. But I definitely disagree with the song’s conclusion that there is no other way aside from first trusting, which leads to obeying. I disagree for two reasons.
One, the Bible doesn’t agree. While the concept of trust and obey is also biblical, obey and trust is as well. Here are a few passages that bear this out.
Mark 1:15
“The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”
John 7:17
“Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own.”
John 8:31-32
To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. 32 Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
In all three passages, obedience precedes real faith. Obedience to God is never optional if we are to please him. Our feelings about the matter are not the deciding factor – ever! This is not to say that our heart-driven emotions are not important, for they are very important. But even when our emotions are leading us away from obedience to the will of God, our intellect must override them, and we can rest assured that God will then help our hearts get in the right place. I can think of so many times when I did not want to do what I knew God wanted me to do and yet I did it, only to find out that my emotions were then grateful that I had obeyed. I have often begun obeying by confessing to God that my heart wasn’t in it and to please help it change as I embarked on the path of obedience. He has honored that request countless times.
Is it possible to obey for wrong reasons and our hearts not then change? Yes, and I think Jesus’ condemnations of the Pharisees show that it is possible. “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me” (Matthew 15:8). He called them hypocrites, play actors, showing how hard their hearts had become. Paul explained why when he taught that a person can become so controlled by Satan that their “consciences have been seared as with a hot iron” (1 Timothy 4:2). Thankfully for those of us trying to follow Jesus, it would take a lot for us to slip low enough for long enough into Satan’s control to reach such a point of hardness of heart.
All of us need to recognize and embrace the principle that Jesus expressed in those three passages quoted earlier. We don’t just do the right things when we feel like it; we do the right things whether we feel like it or not, and then trust God to help us with getting our feelings to a better place. I recall hearing an old adage years ago that immediately rang true with me. “It is easier to act yourself into a better way of feeling that to feel yourself into a better way of acting.” Amen to that! For an emotionally based person like me who tends toward the depressive side, if I allowed myself to act the way I often feel (to begin with), I wouldn’t have been blessed so abundantly by God as I have. For sure, I would not have recently celebrated a 60-year marriage anniversary to a woman who still thinks I am awesome.
Thankfully, I learned early in our marriage to obey and trust, and two of those occasions radically changed the course of my entire life. Almost unbelievably, I was actually seriously angry about these decisions I decided to make. They are stories worth telling. (NOTE: A few days after writing this article, a light bulb went off in my mind bringing another realization to the surface, a scary one that brought me to repentance. I will fashion it into a Part Two extension of this article.)
Decision One – Church and Money
When we got married at the ripe old ages of 22 and 21 (both barely), our differences religiously could have destroyed us. Theresa loved church and I hated church. She had a childlike love for Jesus that made church attendance highly desirable. I was raised in a little church (described in other writing) that turned me off to all things spiritual. I wanted nothing to do with church. Yet, I wanted to marry Theresa so much that I agreed to attend church with her, at least occasionally. Since we were raised in different types of churches, we entered marriage with a plan to alternate between attending our two different denominations. At the beginning of our marriage, I didn’t hold up my end of the bargain and she rarely persuaded me to attend church. After some months, I started going with her occasionally. Once at “her” church, I heard what I believed to be false doctrine and said I would never attend her church again, and didn’t. So she said she would go with me to “my” (using that term very loosely) church, and she did.
When at church services (about once every three weeks), I hated being there. If the preacher preached on hell, I was miserable because I knew I was going there. If he preached on heaven, I was miserable because I knew I was not going there. I couldn’t wait to get out of that building and away from those people and only found joy when the final dismissal prayer “Amen” was heard. And no, I am not exaggerating in the least. It is embarrassing to admit how hardened I was spiritually at the time, but the truth is the truth.
The first time I became really angry at the preacher and his sermon was when he preached about money – church contributions. His assertions were outlandish (to me at least)! He said that although the New Testament didn’t say specifically that we should give a tithe (one-tenth) of our income (gross, not net, by the way), if the Jews under an inferior covenant before Christ came gave that much and more, how could we give less? My blood pressure shot up immediately upon hearing that, although I realized very reluctantly that his logic made sense.
Then that crazy character started talking about our need to pledge a weekly amount that we would faithfully give, and then asked us to fill out a pledge card to that effect. I’m grateful I had a strong heart (physically at least) or I might have had a heart attack. Me give a tenth of our income, and fill out a pledge card promising to do it? Had the dude lost his mind? Then he calmly and confidently said that all of us believed in pledging. I was thinking to myself about some radically strong disagreement to that statement, no doubt laced with some choice words that could never have been expressed in public. He then explained what he meant by speaking of our belief in pledging, noting that we had agreed to pay a house note or rental amount or a monthly amount on a car loan or the amount owed on a type of credit card (very different from our credit cards today, but similar). Again, I could not argue with his logic, as much as I hated it. I was out of that building in a heartbeat when the final Amen came.
Once at home, it got worse. My wife, coming from her church background, was quite familiar and quite comfortable with both parts of that sermon. Her church mailed out envelopes to place their contributions in and deposit in the contribution trays passed each Sunday at church. I had never in my life heard of such a thing. Now she wanted us to start giving a tithe of our gross incomes and fill out that dreaded pledge card stating as much. I’m sure this led to one of our early marriage battles, and we had many. Putting two young, immature spoiled brats together in marriage couldn’t have resulted in less. As I’ve said (and written) often, a great sexual relationship saved us from perhaps nearly killing one another (only a slight exaggeration).
Shockingly, I agreed to do what she asked. The clincher for the agreement was something I haven’t mentioned yet, the preacher’s use of a certain verse spoken by Jesus. “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21). As the preacher man explained the passage, he said that most people miss the point by making a logical assumption and reversing what Jesus actually had said. They assume that he said, “For where your hearts are, there your treasure will be also.” Of course, there is a lot of truth to that statement too, which is why people mistakenly assume that is what he said. But the preacher affirmed that if we put our money into something, our hearts will follow the money. Of course, he was applying it to church contributions.
This observation hit me as another one of his preposterous assertions, but my problem was that Matthew 6:21 did say it in what I too initially thought was reverse order. Although I had no fondness for the Bible, to put it mildly, my mother had somehow even in our negative church setting drilled into my brain that the Bible was the inspired word of God. I’ve never doubted it, from then until now. That verse was why I agreed with Theresa to start giving a tithe and to even write the pledged amount on one of those dratted little cards. I had no faith that my heart would follow my treasure, but I was ticked off enough to decide to put it to the test and show the preacher wrong.
Well, that story has a funny ending. We’ve never quit giving a tithe of our income (usually more) except for a brief period of a few months while in ministry training school when our income was very, very limited. Then another preacher where we were then living preached a similar sermon and we started back tithing. We’ve not stopped since. How has it all panned out for us? Unbelievably! I have some of the wildest stories you could imagine of how God has given us money in the most unusual and unexpected ways. I should write a book about just those occasions.
Grudgingly, even angrily, certainly faithlessly, I started down a road that has led to results that are unbelievable and undeniable at the same time. Once I put my treasure on the line, God did exactly what Jesus promised. When I hear of church members giving little or nothing financially, I feel sorry for them. They have allowed their lack of faith to block their obedience, and hence have missed receiving the many blessings promised in passages like 2 Corinthians 8 & 9, blessings that I have not just enjoyed, but reveled in as my faith soared (and often, my bank account too). I would be afraid not to give generously.
Decision Two – Church and Commitment
This story will be shorter, but even more amazing. This preacher I am describing made me mad on many occasions with his preaching. I would never have believed in the early days with him that he would become one of my best friends and, aside from my wife, the most spiritually influential person in my life. After the whole story came together, I used to describe him as the only man in the state of Louisiana who could have gotten to me spiritually. I was that far gone.
He had three prominent themes in his preaching: evangelistic outreach, God is able, and total commitment to Christ. The combination of the last two were what raised my ire and my resistance to his messages. As described in one of my first books, “The Victory of Surrender,” (still the crowd favorite) – I was deathly afraid of speaking in public. The first time I was “tricked” into leading a closing prayer at a church service, I was so terrified that my voice was like that of a woman in its pitch and embarrassing beyond description. Read the book; that’s just the tip of that particular “fear” iceberg.
Richard, the preacher, had become a bit more tolerable by the time my second story occurred, but I still hated his insistence that God was fully able to enable us to do anything we were called to do in his service. I had said “no” many times to various invitations to serve in some way that I knew I couldn’t do. One Sunday morning after a “God is able” sermon, I had had enough. After it was over, in anger I cornered one of our deacons, a man I still remember well after all of these decades. His name was Robbie Mitchell and he was a man of great faith and great sensitivity and wisdom.
I remember exactly where we were standing in the hall of that church building. I said something to this effect: “Robbie, I’m sick and tired of hearing this stuff about everything being possible with God and him enabling me to do anything I’m asked to do in his service. I flat-out don’t believe it! I’m sick and tired of hearing it and so for one full year, I will not say no to anything I am asked to do, but if it doesn’t work the way Richard is preaching it, I promise to walk out that door and never attend another church service for the rest of my life!” Robbie smiled gently and said, “Sounds like a good plan to me.” Well, I must conclude by saying it’s been a really long year!
