![]() Nearly everyone is a photographer in some way. ![]() IPhones, photobooths, tiny toy cameras, giant professional-grade point and shoots, photo-capturing devices are everywhere. My relationship with the selfie has been evolving during my time in Japan. This is mostly due to the Japanese obsession with image and portrayal and the incredible shallowness that is built up through this preoccupation. The more contact I have with this culture and its habits the more God has shown me how these things reveal such a need for the gospel.Įven without living here an extended amount of time, you would come to realize the Japanese love their photos. My favorite popsicle is back for the summer! Definitely deserves a selfie ) You really don't care about my selfie habits, nor should you! I can't say I'm a huge fan though I am guilty of taking a few.but I digress. My generation truly has a love-hate relationship with this photo genre. It is my purpose, the state in which I will be most fulfilled.īy God's grace I want to choose the path of obedience, the straight and narrow, which leads in the end to the words "well done, good and faithful servant." God grant us all the strength and courage to choose this glorious call to obedience. Obedience to God, to obey him and delight in him forever, is why I was created. Indeed, it is my calling to obey the very reason why I have been chosen by the foreknowledge of God the Father and made able through the sanctifying work of the Spirit as Peter also writes. It can mean heartache, discouragement, frustration, weariness, isolation, grief.īut the fact remains that as a follower of Christ, I am compelled to obey. Obeying God's will for my life could mean going where I don't particularly want to go, or even in some cases staying when I don't want to stay. In my mind it means becoming weak, blindly following the regulations of another. I think the truth is I fear obedience because it seems like a loss of freedom. And in the pridefulness of my heart, that is a lot to bear under. It means acknowledging the authority of another in my life, that I am not my own and cannot live as such. The very definition contains the idea of submission, a dying to oneself and one's desires and comforts. Obedience, especially obedience to Christ as a mark of true discipleship, demands sacrifice. What does it mean to be obedient to Christ as Peter wrote? Am I a true disciple in that my obedience of God's word leads to faith and faith to a greater desire for obedience? Certainly I'm familiar with this word in regards to obeying my parents or obeying the law, but I've lately been challenged by its implications towards my life as a Christian. Merriam Webster defines obedience as the act of submission to restraint or command of authority or more simply put, doing what you are told to do. The apostle Peter in 1 Peter 1, a passage I'm currently memorizing, addresses God's elect who have been chosen for the purpose of obedience to Christ. In Dietrich Bonhoeffer's book The Cost of Discipleship he addresses the entangled yet beautifully orchestrated relationship of faith and obedience. In my return home, I've been confronted with the concept of obedience in a couple different forms.
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