The Insufficiency of Externals
As some of you may or may not know, I have this on and off again obedience with waking up at 5a.m. It is an instruction The Lord has given me for a few years now that I have a challenging time complying to because quite frankly, I be exhausted. I have prayed for His help over and over again, yet His response has remained the same, “Discipline yourself.” It is not that He has abandoned me, because He is very much with me, but rather this is a task where I am responsible for submitting and humbling myself to (1 Peter 5:6).
I have sought out godly counsel from friends and even prayer from friends to help with this act of obedience. I have even sought out practical steps such as going to bed earlier, being more mindful of what I eat or drink right before bed, adjusting the temperature of my A.C., keeping a bottle of water on my nightstand and having two separate alarms including one on the other side of the room that requires me to stand up, nothing has proven effective. I still sleep past my time or in some cases, turn off my two alarms and crawl back into bed. I remember a few times, my body just felt so heavy and not of my control, rendering me feeling weak and helpless to fight against it. It almost seems like a helpless case where I should just give up, but I keep trying. I keep praying for whatever assistance or revelation The Holy Spirit wants to provide me to help me understand and devise a tactic on how to overcome this task.
One very recent insight He gave me was how this act of disobedience was the last thing tying me to my old self, my old identity. Though it seems small in the natural, in the spiritual, this act of disobedience (as with them all by the way), is an open door for more acts of disobedience, sin and returning to our old ways. It is a slippery slope to returning to old behaviors, thoughts and patterns that God has once delivered us from. We will blink and before we know it, thinking, “How did I end up back here?” or “How did I get so far away Him?”
Just as obedience is a heart of surrender that makes room for God to transform our heart into more like Jesus, disobedience makes room for the enemy to transform our heart into more like him.
Both are simple and beyond our present awareness if not careful.
A step further, the Holy Spirit told me the reason all those practical means did not work were because this is not a physical or logical issue, but a heart posture issue. Constantly we ask God to make our surroundings more conducive so that it will be easier for us to obey Him. We request that He change our environments and modify the people around us so that we do not have to work so hard to obey Him; and although I believe He is honored by our desire to obey Him, I do not believe He is honored by our preference to do so by our own means and through a quick escape. God does not want us to suffer in vain, but He does want us to prove our faithfulness to Him and His plans for us.
I look to Jesus, the author and finisher of my faith (Hebrews 12:2) and think of all the ways where He obeyed God beyond His own comfort such as going forty days without food (Matthew 4:1-11). Can you imagine just how mentally, emotionally and physically depleted He was, that made Him the perfect target for temptation with such vulnerability? The enemy even attempted to tempt Him to deliver Himself, a quick escape, and He chose not to because obedience was better than deliverance. Jesus was obedient to the point of death, where He was betrayed by a friend, beaten and tortured by His own people, and crucified. He said that if He wanted, He could call on angels to rescue Him from this plight (Matthew 26:53), but He concluded that obedience was better than deliverance. So He drunk the cup that was given to Him and now we have eternal salvation through Him, which means we have the same power within us to obey as He did.
Nothing outside myself is the fix to my obedience, or to yours. The answer was always and will always remain the same, the power of Christ within us. This is not about changing our surroundings to make life easier, it has always been about a heart being transformed more into the likeness of Jesus which includes how we obey. I could stay up all night, and somehow still manage to fall asleep at 4 a.m. and sleep past my time if my heart is not properly surrendered to God in this act of obedience.
No outside changes will ever do the transformative work within our hearts that was meant for God to complete.
For me, repentance looks like putting God before my desire to sleep and rest, and truly letting go of my old self, full embracing this new identity He is transforming me into. No longer identifying as someone who “loves sleep” but as someone who is “in love with God” to the point of reckless obedience. Someone who knows and trusts that obedience is better than deliverance.
