The Cost of Obeying God

Your heart palpitates as it anticipates the coming of an emotional high. Your hands trembling, your feet shaking, your mind in a daze blindlessly focused on this one thing only. You were restless, you were nervous yet you were excited and suddenly it hits you. Going further only leads you to sin and your heart tells you that it's not worth it. You'll just shrink back to where your emotions used to be and this time plus the heavy guilt that resides now in your heart. So you stopped, an intense aching and longing ensues your heart, affecting your emotions and mood. You felt like you've just deprived yourself of a real treat! Hungry yet not allowed to eat. That my friends is the cost of obeying God.

PAIN, that is my friends, PAIN. It's so real and it pierces like a two-edged sword. Choosing to obey God is not always pleasant. When we pursue to know God's heart and suurender our lives to him, we submit our control and let ourselves "die" so that God may breathe a new life in us. 2 Corinthians 5:17 (NIV) says:

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!

Since we are now in Christ, God changes us. He transforms our lives according to His will. He transforms every aspect of our lives - our thoughts, our character, our views and even the shame that binds us, he sets us free. So now, how does pain come into the picture? Though we are now "born again" into His family, with a new life of adventure that God has laid before us, Satan will not stop from snatching you away from God's family. He appears like a seductive lover, a wolf inside a lamb's body wooing you with promises of pleasure - they could appear as memories of your past life that you used to enjoy, it could be a habit or an addiction that you just can't let go, it could be a feeling or nostalgia, or even real people, even Christian friends that would encourage you fall back into the old sinful thinking or to an old sinful habit. All of this can be used by Satan - our own evil desires, we are dragged away and enticed (James 1:14).

The reality is, when we are tempted by this things, we could be overwhelmed and it seemed that the only way to resolve this is to just give in but the danger it will retaliate back at you. We're like fish that sees a bait of delicious, fat worm and once that it bites the worm, it realizes that there's a hook concealed beneath and it's too late now to unswallow. Surely when this things happen we need God's grace to overcome, to enable to us fight off from succumbing to temptation. As we revel in His word, he clothes us with his armor (Ephesians 6:10-18) and we indulge in the fight. When the battle is won, we could be wounded and pained - like a struggling alcoholic who refuses to take a drink, like a man who refuses to respond to the sexual advances of his female colleague because he is married and other things.

Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane was tempted "not to take the cup of God's wrath", wishing if there could be a different way. We read in the passages of the gospels, that Jesus struggled, he was groaning, his body was shaking and trembling and he's sweating blood - terrified of the fate that awaits him. But he endured because it is for this cause, to do the Father's will that He has come for this hour - that we may be saved. For us, when we experience the pain of obeying God's will, we focus our eyes on Jesus who was just as human as we are, tempted in every way yet did not sin. When we do so, we will find comfort and the peace that goes beyond our understanding. We felt stronger like a mighty warrior who just won the battle. Jesus encouraged us to be of "good cheer, for we have overcome the world"