Where He Leads I Will Follow: Wrap Up

 

 It's been an interesting season as I followed this study during the course of my brain radiation therapy. I stepped into my treatment in faith, believing strongly that God had pointed me to it. And this is a treatment of faith because there is no "proof" no markers that show whether it worked at all. Best case scenario? It doesn't grow anymore, or much more. You see, I don't have the type of tumor that gets "zapped" away by radiation. Mine just gets angrier (think inflammation and scar tissue) and then, hopefully, dies. Can it go wrong? Can worse things happen? Yep. But it was growing anyways, which was already worse, so this was worth a shot! Where He Leads I Will Follow walks us through examples in the Bible of obedience. It gave me a chance to look at both good and bad things that people had done - don't you appreciate how God left all those in there? It also opened my eyes to areas in which I need to obey. Let's take a walk back through this enlightening study.

 The first week focused on the story of Adam and Eve. The entire issue of obedience is brought up because of a gift God gave us called agency, or choice. God gave us the ability to choose our path, to decide whether to do this or that, to believe Him or not. Why would He do this? Because if He didn't, we could never truly love Him. Next, we look at how sin also ushered in the concept of shame, taking away the blessing of being naked and unashamed. Speaking of that sin, I spent one day looking at what led up to it, the decision that affected every human ever to follow, and considering whether any of us would have done differently. After Adam and Eve sinned, God asked them a couple of questions. These weren't for Him to better understand - He knows everything - they were for Adam and Eve to contemplate and to help us learn as well. And from this scenario we are given the ultimate choice now, very much like Adam and Eve were. Will we choose to believe God, or the serpent? Do we believe that what God created for us and us for is good, or do we want to go a different way? Deuteronomy says it better than I ever could, “Today I invoke heaven and earth as a witness against you that I have set life and death, blessing and curse, before you. Therefore choose life so that you and your descendants may live!” (Deuteronomy 30:19)

 The second week looked at the story of Noah and the flood. We start out with the sad truth that, "The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled." (Genesis 6:6). Among the whole world, God found only Noah that was still a good guy. But what did it mean that he was righteous and blameless? I don't think it means he never did anything wrong, because the Bible clearly points out errors that he made. Rather, he walked in relationship with God, and when he did mess up, he admitted it and sought to restore that relationship. You've got to wonder if Noah saw the earth as being as messed up as God did. After all, he was pretty used to it. That being the case, it must have been pretty difficult to do something so massive, so counter-cultural, for so long. You see, Noah was basically building a skyscraper in a mud-hut village over 100 years. That's a long time to keep up a major project that literally EVERYONE is against. But what about Noah's wife? She kind of got caught up in all this too. The last day of this week looks at how, as a wife, I am called to support my husband in his calling as well.

 Week three studies Abraham and Sarah, or Abram and Sarai as they start out. God starts out by calling Abram to “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.”  (Genesis 12:1). Down the road they add an Egyptian maidservant to their household and, due to a series of wild circumstances, Sarai gives her to Abram to try to get a child through her. When all goes as planned, it's not quite what Sarai expected and she makes life pretty difficult for Hagar, causing Hagar to run away to the wilderness. That's where Hagar faces her first major moment to choose obedience to God, and in that moment, she has the blessing of being the only person in the Bible to actually give God a name, El Roi, “the God who sees me.” Some of the best advice I've learned about obedience, is that its best done right away, something that Abraham demonstrated for us multiple times, but especially when He was instructed to circumcise his entire household. Obedience is rooted in belief. If we don't believe something to be true, we won't obey it. When Sarah heard that she would bear a child in her old age, she laughed. Was this because she didn't believe, or because she did and it was all so ridiculously overwhelming? And then, at the end of the week, we get to the ultimate story of obedience in Abraham and Sarah's long lives, the sacrifice of their son, Isaac. This day blew me away as I was made aware of so many different parallels between the sacrifice of Isaac and that of Jesus centuries later. Check it out!

 The story of Moses and the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt filled week four. I had to spend the first day contrasting the immediate obedience of Abraham the week before with the argumentative, reluctant obedience of Moses. Sometimes obedience requires something very specific of us, like when the Israelites were instructed to paint the blood of a lamb on the doorposts of their houses. God has very good reasons for giving us instructions like this, and it's in our best interest to listen! Then, as the Israelites were escaping from Egypt, they came to a hard stop at the Red Sea. There they were, over a million people with all their flocks and herds, with the Sea on one side and the army of Egypt coming up on the other. But, as always, God proved faithful, and had them take a path most unexpected. So, why do we obey? Yes, it's the right thing to do, but humans typically need more of a motivator than that! Deuteronomy 5:32-33 teaches us that we should obey God so that it might go well with us. And that's exactly what happens when we follow where He leads, His commands bring us life and hope!

 Departing from the one story a week formula of the first four, week five looks at five different stories in the Old Testament. First, we consider Rahab, our sister the prostitute. She stood up in an amazing counter-cultural act of obedience, preserving the Israelite spies who had come to her and, ultimately, saving her entire family from death and becoming an ancestor and part of the story of Jesus Himself. The next day is about Israel's first two kings, Saul and David. They had different approaches, different hearts, and it showed. Then our friend, Jonah, takes the stage. We can learn a lot from him, and, sadly, much of it is what not to do. Daniel took a stand, along with three of his friends, when they were taken into the Babylonian court - opting not to eat from the delicacies of the king's table. This was a much bigger deal than it may first appear, and it seemed to be both a spiritual marker in their story and a springboard for future radical obedience. Later, those three friends: Hannaniah, Mishael, and Azariah, faced a massive test of faith when threatened with being thrown into a fiery furnace if they didn't bow to the king's statue. Because of the work God had done in their hearts, they were able to say, "If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from Your Majesty’s hand. But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.” (Daniel 3:17-18). 

 As is fitting, we finished off the study in week six taking a look at the perfect example of obedience, Jesus. Mary starts us off with her beautiful story of submission and acceptance of God's will in her life. Then we considered the "emptying" process that Jesus underwent when He chose to step down from heaven and walk on the earth as a human. I'm so grateful for the order of things in God's kingdom. I love Him because He first loved me (1 John 4:19). I obey God, because I love Him, not to receive His love. That's such a crucial piece of this entire study. Our obedience is an outflow of our love for God, not an attempt to earn His love. And, as we start to wrap this whole thing up, we examine how sin entered the world through one man and how one Man fixed it all. So, with all this knowledge and wisdom we've accumulated over the last six weeks, what do we do? "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”  (Matthew 28:19-20) The Great Commission, Jesus' last directive to us from earth, sends us out to our own mission fields in the world. What is yours?

Here's the Thing: Do I still have a lot to learn about obedience? You'd better believe it! But I'm so grateful for all I've learned as I walked through this study, and simultaneously through radiation therapy. I can trust that what God has directed He will provide for. I've seen it. I've walked it. When I started therapy, I recognized the very real likelihood that I wouldn't be able to walk the distance from the parking garage to treatment and back the whole time and that I may need to use my wheelchair. But, I'm so happy to report, that with the help of a rollator and my faithful husband, I was able to walk to and from EVERY SINGLE TREATMENT. Here's a little video of my final celebration: