So they called the two apostles back in and told them they must never, for any reason, teach anything about the name of Jesus. Peter and John answered, “Do you think God wants us to obey you or to obey him? We cannot keep quiet about what we have seen and heard.” The officials could not find any reason to punish Peter and John. So they threatened them and let them go. The man who was healed by this miracle was more than 40 years old, and everyone was praising God for what had happened. (Acts 4:18-22 CEVDCUS06)
I believe we as christians are constantly faced with this question " To obey man or God?. Sometimes we might be caught in situations that put us right in the questioning hot seat where we are sure of the question and have to make a definite answer just like Peter and John as they stood before the high priests and the teachers of law "So they called them back in and told them that under no condition were they to speak or to teach in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answered them, “You yourselves judge which is right in God's sight—to obey you or to obey God. (Acts 4:18, 19 GNT)"
In other times the question is more subtle so we never realize that this same question is before us or that the choice we make is a true reflection of where our obedience lies.
In little things such as " asking someone to sign in for you at work when you are nowhere near the office or helping your boss in a lie because you are afraid of being victimized or
We make these choices but we never want to think deeply about the choice we made because we might then realize that we just obeyed man. Anytime we go against Gods words or His commands in order to please someone we have ultimately made the choice to obey man.
The question i think we should all ask ourselves is why we find it hard to obey God! His commands are more for our own good than they are for Him. Throughout the bible,where have we ever seen God forsake his people even when He commands them to do something that might not have made common sense like asking Moses to take his staff and touch the red sea. Imagine God asking you to take your walking stick and touch the red sea when you can hear your enemies approaching,when you are already sweating and trembling from fear of the unknown. A lot of us would say " touching the stick to the water would not make any common sense and how does touching the stick to the water get these enemies of my back anyhow? Its so ridiculous when we think about it and thats the reason why we find it hard to obey. We seem to think that whatever God tells us has to make sense to us first before we act, we try to get into Gods head to know how He thinks this could work,why He thinks this could work and the success rate is. Basically we want God to break it down for us.
We need to understand and know the awesomeness of the God we serve and we also need to know that the most feared man on earth,the most powerful man on earth and the most intelligent man on earth was created by this same God. God is trustworthy,He created the heavens,the sun,the moon and everything. He is so trustworthy that i have never woken up any morning in all my life and seen the moon instead of the sun or night instead of day or the sun purple instead of yellow. With God there is no error message or failed to complete message or please bear with us we are experiencing technical difficulty.With man there always is!
So ask yourself to obey God or Man!
Written by Kachi
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