Obedience: Burden or Assurance?

 “Today I feel discouraged and disappointed. I certainly thought that if God really loved me, and I really loved Him, I should find myself growing better day by day. But I am not improved in the least. Most of the time I spend on my knees I am either stupid, feeling nothing at all, or else my head is full of what I was doing before I began to pray, or what I am going to do as soon as I get through. I do not believe anybody else in the world is like me in this respect. Then when I feel differently, and can make a nice, glib prayer, with floods of tears running down my cheeks, I get all puffed up, and think how much pleased God must be to see me so fervent in spirit. I go downstairs in this frame, and begin to scold Susan for misplacing my music, till all of a sudden I catch myself doing it, and stop short, crestfallen and confounded. I have so many such experiences that I feel like a baby just learning to walk, who is so afraid of falling that it has half a mind to sit down once for all.”

So begins a journal entry by poor Katherine, a young Christian girl in Elizabeth Prentiss’ book: Stepping Heavenward. Katherine’s story is so familiar to me, and, I think, so familiar to many of us. I cannot count the number of times that I have fallen asleep while praying, or have distracted myself just half a sentence in. I also cannot count the number of times that I have waltzed into a room on a “spiritual high,” only to be short and unkind with my mother. The roller coaster that plunges into despair just seconds after a fulfilling prayer is a cruel reality for so many of us.

I really think that most of us know better than this, but we still base our belief in our salvation on how close we feel to our Creator, or on how peaceful we feel during trials, or even on how many commandments we are obeying. 1 John 2:3-6 seems, on the surface, perhaps, to fuel our feverish efforts to obey every commandment we possibly can, and the fear that we have forgotten one or two, thus sealing a fate of eternal torment.

“By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. The one who says, ‘I have come to know him,’ and does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him; but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him: the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked.”

Tonight, while sitting in my mid-week Bible class, this passage was framed for me in a new light. The teacher placed this section of John’s epistle under “assurance,” one of the broad themes we are exploring in our study of 1 John. As I sat there, thinking through these words, it was as if a world that was upside down turned itself over. For the first time, I could see the comfort John meant with these words. To illustrate, let’s turn again to Stepping Heavenward. Katherine has heard a sermon, inviting those who can’t tell whether they love God to attend a class. She attends, and this conversation between her and the preacher is recorded for us in Katherine’s journal:

“In the first place, then, you feel that you love your mother? But you never feel that you love your God and Saviour?”

“I often try, and try, but I never do,” I said.

“Love won’t be forced,” he said, quickly.

“Then what shall I do?”

The conversation continues, with Dr. Cabot asking Katherine several questions about whether she enjoys spending time with God, or hearing Him praised. We resume our eavesdropping here:

“But come now, why do you try to do what you think will please Him? Because it is easy? Because you like to do what He likes rather than what you like yourself?”

I tried to think, and got puzzled.

“Never mind,” said Dr. Cabot, “I have come now to the point I was aiming at. You cannot prove to yourself that you love God by examining your feelings towards Him. They are indefinite and they fluctuate. But just as far as you obey Him, just so far, depend upon it, you love Him. It is not natural to us sinful, ungrateful human beings to prefer His pleasure to our own, or to follow His way instead of our own way, and nothing, nothing but to love Him can or does make us obedient to Him.”

Can you see it with me? Dr. Cabot’s words help us to understand the assurance John offers in 1 John 2. If we are questioning whether we know, love, and are in Him, any obedience to Him is a sign that we do. Do you ever try to please Him? You could not do that if you did not love Him. C.S. Lewis beautifully elaborates on this point in chapter 8 of his famous book, The Screwtape Letters. Writing as a senior demon, and referring to Christ as The Enemy, he says:

“And that is where the troughs come in. You must have often wondered why the Enemy does not make more use of His power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree He chooses and at any moment. But you now see that the Irresistible and the Indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of His scheme forbids Him to use. Merely to override a human will (as His felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For His ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve. He is prepared to do a little overriding at the beginning. He will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. But He never allows this state of affairs to last long. Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs – to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, that it is growing in to the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best…He cannot ‘tempt’ to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”

It is in those moments when we choose to obey even though it feels as if we’ve been deserted that we find our assurance that we do, in fact, love Him. The dry periods are no fun. Feeling deserted hurts. There is no need to pile on top of that the crushing weight of our doubt about whether we love Him. If you’re in a dry period, are you still stumbling in an effort to obey? If you answer yes, you love Him. Be assured. He will come for you, and you will bask in the fullness of His glory. Let obedience be an assurance instead of a burden.