There’s been a problem in my household that has been worsening over the last few months.
I will ever so sweetly tell my kids to do something- pick up their trash, put their shoes in their room, put their markers away, and then, I just wait. I wait and wait and wait. I will leave the room and come back 10 minutes later and the chore still hasn’t been done yet. I come back 10 minutes after that and it STILL hasn’t been done. Then, I start to get annoyed.
“GUYS! I said to pick up your stuff! This is the second time I am telling you!” I will say, in my not so sweet sounding voice. 30 minutes will go by and things are still where they left them. At this point there are usually consequences which generally involve me picking up the item and tossing it into the garbage. But, if it’s something that I know they really love, like valuable Lego pieces or newly purchased markers (or shoes!!), I will tell them the third time.
“GUYS! PICK UP YOUR STUFF!!!!” (And then they usually ask me why I’m so mad!)
One particular day, I had been telling my kids to get ready because we were going somewhere. I had given them an hour warning and then a 30 minute warning. Finally with 15 minutes left, they got up to go get ready, whining the whole way “Aww, but we wanted to color before we left!” I said “If you guys would have just gotten ready the first time that I had asked you to, who knows what you could have done with all the time that you had!”
I was standing in my bedroom when I said it, and I stopped right there with this thought: How many times has your (mine) delayed obedience cost you something?
I felt this churning in my stomach. I will never know.
Immediate obedience. That’s what Jesus requires of us. No delay, no negotiations. Just do it.
In Mark 1, Jesus begins his ministry and gathers his disciples. He saw Simon and Andrew casting their nets and said “Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men (Mark1:17)”. Every version of the story says that they immediately dropped their nets and went with him. No questions asked. And their lives were changed forever because of this one, non-debated, non-delayed decision.
Don’t put off what God has been telling you to do. You never know what it might cost you.
~Shiney
