To obey or disobey, that is the question.
King David says, “I will keep your law continually, forever and ever, and shall walk in a wide place, for I have sought your precepts. I will also speak of your testimonies before kings and shall not be put to shame, for I find my delight in your commandments, which I love. I will lift up my hands toward your commandments, which I love, and I will meditate on your statutes.”
The Apostle Paul says, “For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being…”
Jesus teaches his disciples to “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.”
To obey or disobey, that is the question. On many occasions David, the man after God’s own heart, displeased the Lord. Perhaps the greatest missionary in history, Saint Paul, was the self-nominated chief of sinners. We daily break God’s will in thought, word, and deed.
The unknown writer of Hebrews warns, “Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.”
Says Paul in a moment of personal honesty, “I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.”
To obey or disobey, that is the question. Our spirit wishes to obey the will of the Lord and our flesh drags us off on a journey into a far country, and there we momentarily squander our property in reckless living.
When asking his disciples to keep with him in his hour of trial, Jesus warns, “Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
When we pray, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”, we are asking much more of the Lord than ‘help me do what is right’. We are asking for a miracle of heart, mind, soul, and strength. Natural man, “fast-bound in sin and nature’s night”, cannot and will not serve God. Born-again man desires to please God, but battles three enemies: remaining sin, the Devil, and the world. Glorified man, once in heaven, is “saved to sin no more”.
The 16th century Heidelberg Catechism explains this petition in the Lord’s Prayer: “‘Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven’; that is, grant that we and all men may renounce our own will, and without murmuring obey Thy will, which is only good; that so every one may attend to and perform the duties of his station and calling as willingly and faithfully as the angels do in heaven.”