Obedience is God’s love language.

Obedience..Let’s be honest, it’s not the most exciting word. In fact, there’s a pretty good chance you are tempted to quickly tap on the little red “x” at the top of your browser, or “accidentally” strike the escape button. Don’t do that. Hang with me for a couple of minutes.

It was about three years ago when I began to notice a major stirring in our household. My husband and I, married at the ripe age of 21, had spent our entire marriage building. Most of the building was in our careers. Having married while I was still in nursing school (10/10 do not recommend), we worked long hours to simply survive in the beginning. We threw all of our time and energy into building ourselves a future and a home.

Life was moving at a rapid pace. We had children almost immediately, climbed the corporate ladder quickly, built our forever home, and I left my nursing career to operate my own business. Finally, we had “arrived”….Or so we thought. That’s when the stirring began.

There was a restlessness. I saw it in my husband and in myself. I noticed the more time I’d spent in the word, the hungrier I became. Conversations with the people around us suddenly included rumblings of “What if God is asking more from us?” I spent hours trying to rationalize how or why we’d ever pivot from the life we had built to something imaginary and less secure.

Even having parents and grandparents in full-time ministry, I still didn’t have the eyes to see it yet. Surely, the Lord wasn’t nudging us to walk away from everything WE had accomplished…I mean, everything he had just blessed us with…

I’ll spare you the long version of this story because it’s quite layered. Ultimately, God was asking for our obedience. Per the recommendation of my former pastor’s wife, we picked up the book “Draw the Circle: The 40 Day Prayer Challenge” by Mark Batterson and intentionally created a circle around us to intercede on our behalf. We didn’t even know what we were praying for. There was no indication of “what” God wanted us to step into. We just prayed that God would reveal His first step to us.

On the morning of day 40, my husband was announced to have joined the staff at Center Point Church in Hendersonville, TN. That’s the polished way of saying he said yes to leaving his six figure job in corporate America for a part-time position in our church with a milelong job description. Welcome to ministry!

Here’s the thing. I’ve been taking notes over the last three years…a lot of them. I could tell you story after story of what God has taught us. I could show you how He’s been faithful to us financially when it made absolutely NO sense on paper. I could share a lot of wonderful things we’ve seen God do in and through the people of our church. I could also shed light on the pain, grief, and loneliness of entering ministry with very little mentorship. But this season of our story started with an act of obedience.

What’s your love language? Personally, mine floats between acts of service and quality time. Obedience is God’s love language. John 14:15 says “If You love me, obey my commandments.” What He’s asking from us, and for us, is right there in scripture. Eccelsiastes says in the conclusion to “Fear God and keep His commandments.”

Obedience > Outcome.

Oftentimes, I think we overcomplicate Christianity. We forget to teach those coming behind us that it’s not our job to control our lives, but to be in relationship with the Lord of our lives. That first “yes” of obedience our family took into full-time ministry was the EASIEST act of obedience yet. To the world, it made no sense. And by world, I mean we had family and friends we love who didn’t understand or fully agree.

I am beyond thankful the first “yes” was confirmed in so many ways because it gave us laser focus clarity. Without that, I think there would have been many times we would have questioned the call. Can I tell you why? Our big acts of obedience don’t usually compare to the difficulty of walking out our everyday obedience.

Obedience is hard because holiness is hard. Obedience is what keeps us in the word each day. It’s asking God to search our hearts and prune us, even when it hurts our pride. Sometimes it looks like continuing to show up and steward the ministries He’s given us when we feel worn out, defeated, or even lost.

Practically speaking, it’s not responding to a text message the way our flesh wants to when someone gets us wrong. Or waiting to have a hard conversation until after you’ve prayed about it. We walk out our everyday obedience because that’s how God feels loved. It’s mesmerizing to me that the pages of His word are infused with a beautiful love story where the God of the universe is saying “I created you because I love you! And I just want to be loved back!” He makes it clear. If we love him, we will obey him.

Here’s the caveat. The level we obey him, is based upon the level in which we believe the above is true. Do we believe we are incredibly loved by God? Are we leading our teams and churches from this place of love and security, or from our own doubts, insecurities, and fears? If we want to walk out an obedient life, we have to ask ourselves the hard questions. So let’s ask ourselves:

What part of God’s character am I struggling to believe today? How is my unbelief affecting my obedience to Him? Take some time to wrestle with these questions, and then be obedient to what God reveals to you.

About the Author: Lauren Pugh, and her husband Thomas, serve on staff at Center Point Church in Hendersonville, TN. They have a hunger to seek the presence of God and to make Him known.