You just have to go

     “So Samuel said: Has the LORD as great a delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, As in obeying the voice of the LORD?  Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, And to heed than the fat of rams.” (1 Samuel 15:22)

    Nik Ripken in his book “The Insanity of God” tells many stories of persecution and God’s faithfulness to those being persecuted behind the “Iron Curtain” countries during communist rule in the former USSR, in China, and Southeast Asia. The following is a story that comes out of Russia and shows us many things about the God that we serve and His faithfulness.

    “One pastor was arrested and placed in prison, while his wife and children were sent to live (or die) in Siberia. One winter night in their remote, dilapidated wooden cabin which now served as their home, the three children divided their families last crust of bread, and drank the last cup of tea in the house before climbing into bed still hungry. Kneeling to say their prayers, they asked,  ‘Where are we going to get some more food, Mama? We’re hungry! Do you think Papa even knows where we live now?” Their mother assured them that their heavenly Father knew where they lived. For now, He was the one who would have to provide. The prayed and asked for God’s provision.

     Thirty kilometers away, in the middle of the night, God woke up the deacon of a church and instructed him, “Get out of bed. Harness your horse, hitch the horse to the sled, load up all the extra vegetables that the church has harvested, the meat, and the other food that the congregation collected, and take it to that pastor’s family living outside the village. They are hungry!”

    The deacon said. ‘But Lord, I can’t do that! It’s below zero outside. My horse might freeze and I might freeze!’

   The Holy Spirit told him, ‘You must go! The pastor’s family is in trouble!’

    The man argued. ‘Lord, you’ve got to know that there are wolves everywhere. They could eat my horse and if they do, they’ll then eat me and I’ll never make it back.’

    But the deacon said that the Holy Spirit told him, ‘You don’t have to come back. You just have to go.”

  So he did.

   When he knocked loudly on the door of that rickety cabin in the pre-dawn darkness the next morning, the banging must have terrified the mother and her children. But imagine their joy and amazement when they fearfully, hesitantly opened the cabin door to find one very small, very cold, member of the Body of Christ standing on their front step. His food-laden sled was behind him. He held a huge sack, and announced, ‘Our church collected this food for you. Be fed. When this runs out, I’ll bring more.’

    Long after I heard this story, I kept thinking about God’s final instructions to the deacon: ‘You just have to go.’

  You don’t have to come back. You just have to go.   

   As it turns out, he did come back. Even so, the instruction is so clear. You just have to go. You just have to go. Even if there is no clarity about your return, you just have to go.

   The memory of that deacon’s courageous obedience lives on in his story. The story has been told by his family for generations. And the story is also told by the extended family of those who were saved by his gift. The story celebrates one man’s obedience and God’s miraculous provision.” (The Insanity of God by Nik Ripken, pp 166-167)

   What has God told you to do? To love the Lord God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and your neighbor as yourself? To forgive those whom have wronged you just as Christ has forgiven you? To tell others about the Savior of the world and how He has saved you from sin and death? To let your yes be yes and your no be no? To love your enemies?

   Yes, all these and many more. Remember: ‘To obey is better than sacrifice.”

   “You are My friends if you do whatever I command you.” (John 15:14)

Pray:

1.     Lord help me today to be obedient to read and study your Word so that I will know what you require of me.

2.     Help me to be obedient to the “still small voice” that guides me to be more like you each day as I learn your ways and follow you and not the world around me.

3.     Fill me with your Spirit and help me to be quick to obey without arguing or making excuses why I don’t want to do something difficult that you have asked of me.