“Beware of the inclination to dictate to God what consequences you would allow as a condition of your obedience to Him.” -Oswald Chambers
If you were to look at a map of where I’ve been and what I’ve done and sought to do and gave up on doing over the past decade, you would get dizzy. Loopties and whirly twirlies and back-tracks and peaks and valleys.
The more I grow in bible literacy and learn to read the Bible as it was meant to be read, the more clarity I gain surrounding some things I’ve already walked through. A perk of getting older. Realizing how little you knew back when you knew everything.
One thing I’m realizing more and more now though, is that I could go back and lay a finger at many points on my map of whirly twirlies, and I could trace a lot of them back to my worrying about what my obedience to God would cost others.
Meaning, sometimes when God calls us to a certain something, it can have a very real effect on the people around us. It can be costly for them.
We all have people we love so much. I’m the type of person, I’d like to leave all the doors open forever no matter what, as if to say, “I know that God has lead me to this place or thing away from you………. but hey! Maybe I’ll be back soon! Maybe that’s not what He’s doing!”
Because I don’t want to hurt someone I love. I don’t want to hurt someone who loves me. I want to be with all the people that I love and be with them lots and if it hurts them for me to be away or to go do this other thing then I’d rather not break the news that I’m going.
But I am 34 now. I’ve seen in scripture many times over where God did not shy away from asking people to leave things and people and kingdoms and titles and possessions and lands. I’ve seen where people begged disciples not to go to a place because they loved the disciples so much they couldn’t bear it if they were hurt. And the disciples went on anyway.
I’ve seen where Jesus Himself said: “And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life.” (Matthew 19:29)
I stand by all my loops in my journey and have been thankful for the mercy and gracious opportunities I’ve been given by a sovereign God at each stop–even when my decisions lacked wisdom or steadfastness. But if I’m honest, I know there are loops and twirls and back-tracks that would not be there if I’d not taken on the burden of worrying so often what my obedience would cost others.
I ask myself now, where might I have stayed put?
What may have been accomplished for God’s glory?
There were times when I was okay with what it cost me to follow God’s leading, but I couldn’t bear what it might cost others. And maybe I bailed too quick.
Oswald Chambers says that “..we can disobey God if we choose, and it will bring immediate relief to the situation, but it will grieve our Lord. If, however, we obey God, He will care for those who have suffered the consequences of our obedience. We must simply obey and leave all the consequences with Him.”
God’s call on your life may cost others. What, I don’t know. But like Oswald says, it will often cost them more than it costs us–because if you’re truly obeying the Lord, it is a delight. I feel this way often. All the delight of happily, finally, answering to a call, and all the pain and worry of the consequences it will bring others.
Can this be true God? I pray. That You will be able to care for anyone left in the wake of my genuine obedience to you? That’s pride of course. As if I would leave holes so big that in my absence the Lord could not fill them.
I know that it is part of a maturing Christian’s path to learn to be strong and steadfast in their decisions when they’ve been made with patience and prayer, and raked and wrung over with scripture. Good, godly decisions are worth standing by. And they are worth holding on to and pressing forth with even when your emotions roll in every day and insist you go this way or that way, or they whisper that “even if the cost does not feel too much for you—maybe it is too much for someone you love.“
The Lord sees them. Whoever “them” is. Whoever is having a hard time losing you, or seeing you less, or watching you grow or move on. And God will ask this obedience of you anyway.
And I don’t say this part flippantly, because I say it to my very self at the heels of an impossible decision: Obey anyway, and trust Him with the rest.
Jess Davis 
Good post. I have been wiling to trust God to work in my life for a long time, but trusting God to work in other people’s lives is something I have had to learn over the last few years. Especially when I have had to let them go due to decisions made by others outside my control. That is the hard one for me.
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