Don La Fou­cade

How obe­di­ent are you? Who or what are you most­ly obe­di­ent to? Is your obe­di­ence de­pen­dent up­on your feel­ings? It shouldn't be, be­cause if al­lowed, our feel­ings can de­ceive us. At times we may or may not 'feel' to do the right thing. Our 'choic­es' then, are in­flu­enced by what seems (for us) the plea­sur­able thing to do. Life is a con­tin­u­um of choic­es that must be made. Im­me­di­ate­ly, we must fol­low 'the will' to do some­thing or we risk 'the thing' not be­ing done. Our wills then, are con­stant­ly be­ing ex­er­cised and for some, this can be an on­go­ing bat­tle. On one hand our con­science says "do this please" and on the oth­er hand our feel­ings say "this is more grat­i­fy­ing to do." How should we choose who/what to obey? There's a con­tin­u­ous fight with­in and that strug­gle re­al­ly has to do with us be­ing obe­di­ent to God's will. He has giv­en to each of us our wills for a pur­pose and yes, we have every right to ex­er­cise them. That how­ev­er, should not be an ex­cuse to do our own thing. Like sheep, we may wan­der wher­ev­er we feel led, obliv­i­ous to the dan­gers lurk­ing close by; but this 'blind' or mind­less ap­proach, can re­sult in us be­ing ex­posed to great per­il.

Yes, des­tinies are be­ing con­stant­ly de­ter­mined whether or not we're aware of it. We must pause and ask our­selves 'why' we are do­ing what we are do­ing, be­cause it is de­ter­min­ing where we will end up. My will is al­so be­ing test­ed, even at this time. I am learn­ing that God has a 'pur­posed will' for each of us. He knows what the fu­ture holds and it's bet­ter for us to ask God to show us His will and when He does, we should lis­ten. At times, I want to write what­ev­er I feel like writ­ing, but God, my source of in­spi­ra­tion, has oth­er ideas. You may (or may not) have great plans for your life and you may have your own ideas of how these plans can be ac­com­plished. Crit­i­cal to our goals be­ing achieved is ob­serv­ing the re­sult of ex­er­cis­ing our wills. Let his­to­ry be our guide. What comes to mind are the many times I chose to be dis­obe­di­ent and the re­sult­ing con­se­quences. Pain I didn't like, but it was need­ed so I could learn from my mis­takes. En­joy­ing giv­ing in­spired ad­vice is not a guar­an­tee of us­ing that ad­vice. I, like you, still have to make the right choic­es. I still have to be obe­di­ent! Some obey 'the voice with­in' and some obey based on 'the crowd re­sponse.' The dan­ger with the lat­ter, is that we may be be­hav­ing like sheep (or fol­low­ers) when we are all ca­pa­ble of lead­er­ship... ca­pa­ble of lead­ing sheep!

Some­body is al­ways fol­low­ing our lead. How can we safe­ly lead oth­ers if we our­selves are fol­low­ing blind­ly? At this point, it should be eas­i­ly un­der­stood, that if we are to ac­com­plish ALL of the great things we can, we must be obe­di­ent to God's will. I am no more spe­cial to God than any­one else. All I am is a will­ing ves­sel; at times strug­gling to be obe­di­ent. Late­ly my re­solve has been, "God, let your will be done in Don!" Feel­ings come and go, but I am learn­ing and I don't have to fol­low every im­pulse. My de­sire is to be obe­di­ent to God's will in spite of what I face or feel; be­cause I have to face what I feel whether I feel to or not!

What about you? How obe­di­ent are you go­ing to be to 'the will', God's will?