Tuesday, February 4

To listen to the audio version, click here. 

Joyful are those who obey his laws and search for him with all their hearts.

—Psalm 119:2, nlt

I don’t know about you, but there are some professions where I hope the professional in question is completely invested. If I’m going to go under for surgery, I’m counting on the anesthesiologist to follow the entire protocol, not roughly 50 percent of it. If a child I love is getting on the school bus, I certainly hope the driver passed every section of the driving test. It’s not enough that she aced the written portion and the vision portion if she failed the actual driving part. The same goes for the chef who’s making my dinner at a restaurant. I’m relying on him to follow food safety guidelines entirely—it won’t cut it if he washes his hands only every other time he handles raw poultry.

It seems rather ludicrous for someone to show halfhearted devotion to the rules when it comes to things like medicine, transportation, or food preparation. But for some reason, when it comes to the most significant aspect of our lives—our spiritual health—we tend to be surprisingly lackadaisical about our devotion.

Scripture says we are to be wholehearted in our obedience to God’s commands: “Joyful are those who obey his laws and search for him with all their hearts” (Psalm 119:2, nlt, emphasis added).

According to the psalmist, obedience isn’t something we do with gritted teeth, like eating our spiritual vegetables. Rather, it’s something we are to do with joy. And while it sounds counterintuitive, obedience and joy form something of a pleasant cycle. We obey out of joy, and the very act of obedience brings joy into our lives. That joy leads to obedience, and the cycle continues.

Perhaps part of the reason we tend to struggle with obedience is because we often get it backward: we think obeying is a prerequisite—something we have to do to please God or make him like us or finagle our way into his good graces. But in reality, obedience isn’t something we do in an attempt to earn our way toward God; it’s what we do in response to his goodness and faithfulness to us.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian and pastor, is someone who committed his life to wholehearted obedience. God’s instructions weren’t just theoretical concepts for him; they were something he was willing to live for—and ultimately die for. In his reckoning, true obedience is something that goes beyond our speech and must also be played out in our actions. As a pastor, he believed in the power of words, but he also knew that words aren’t enough. He is known for saying, “One act of obedience is better than one hundred sermons.”

Living in Nazi Germany during the 1940s, Bonhoeffer refused to stand by silently as genocide against the Jews swept through his country. He took seriously God’s commands to protect the persecuted and uphold righteousness, so he spoke boldly against the Nazi regime and joined the anti-Hitler resistance. It wasn’t long before he was arrested and put in a concentration camp. After spending several years there, he was executed—just weeks before Germany surrendered. But even in his death, Bonhoeffer’s life serves as a prophetic voice to all of us that obedience is worth the sacrifice.

In his classic book The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer wrote, “Only he who believes is obedient and only he who is obedient believes.” A fitting statement for someone who lived a life of wholehearted belief and wholehearted obedience.

In what ways are you being halfhearted about following Jesus? What’s one thing you can do today to be all in?

—Stephanie Rische