OBEY WHO?

There are more challenging words from Jesus today. We are to love him more than our own parents. He is not asking us to love them less than we do, but is addressing issues of obedience: nothing, not even our parents, should stop us from what God is calling us to do. Tensions between parents and offspring would have been a very real problem for the first believers. Christianity was a new faith and many parents must have been very distressed when family members left their traditional faith. Most of the first Christians were Jews and the fifth commandment to ‘honor your father and your mother’2 would have presented them with a particular dilemma: should they obey parents who wanted them to abandon their newfound faith, or follow Christ? Jesus, however, clearly thought obedience to God trumped obedience to parents.

Even today people are still rejected by their families for turning to Christ. However, for most of us the pressure not to follow God’s will for our lives takes a more subtle form: when their faith sets children on a different path to the norm, families may express concerns about, for instance, wasting a good education, having an insecure financial future or moving too far away from home. Even Christian parents can find themselves doing this. Subtle pressures not to do God’s will can be rooted in damaging comments family members have made over the years too, such as ‘you’ll never amount to much.’ If we still believe words like these rather than trusting in God’s view of us, this can hold us back from doing his will. Have we experienced any of these more subtle pressures not to follow God’s leading in our lives and how have we responded to these?

Pray for those around the world who have been rejected by their families because of their decision to follow Christ. Release International and Open Doors websites have details.