When Prompted, Act Quickly

 

“Obey me, and I will be your God…”

—Jeremiah 7:23

Do you have a characteristic walk? Can people recognize you by watching your distinctive walk?

And this is love: that we walk in obedience to God’s commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love.

These words come from the pen of the Apostle John, a man who knew much about obedience, as recorded in 2 John 1:6.

Oddly enough, John was the one disciple of the original twelve disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ who lived the longest on this earth. He saw a great deal in those years. And, at the end of his life, God granted him a glimpse of what was to come, which he dutifully recorded in the last book of the New Testament, the Book of Revelation.

Obedience remains a key component of a mature walk of faith. But is obedience all that easy? Is it easy to follow Christ’s example? Is it easy to respond to the nudging of the Holy Spirit? Said in a more contemporary way: “Is it hassle free to obediently follow our Lord and Savior.” The answer is decidedly, “No!” There is a price we must pay for obedience.

Over the years, I have learned that it is far better to respond as quickly as possible when the Holy Spirit nudges me to act in some way. It took me a while to learn this. But, eventually, I thought that I had this important truth pretty firmly in the center of my reality.

However, over the past year, the Holy Spirit has had to repeatedly nudged me to take care of something with which I was very reluctant to resolve.

Quite by accident, I did something that might well have offended someone whom I care about greatly. Instead of dealing with what happened immediately, I was too embarrassed to take the kind of action that I normally would have taken. Instead, I allowed what I had done to fester within me.

At first, I tried to put it out of my mind. I tried to pretend that surely the other person would realize that what I had done had happened by accident. Since I never received any indication from that person that even hinted at an awareness of what I had done, surely I could just let it roll off into the dark mist of history.

Apparently, the Holy Spirit didn’t agree. He kept reminding me of what I had done and, more so, my failure to apologize and to explain how what I had done occurred very much as a result of my clumsiness and the lack of balance brought on by my arthritis-riddled legs and back.

“Surely this is something that now lies very much in the past,” I would counter.

“You need to apologize and explain,” the Spirit would respond.

And so it went for months and months. The Holy Spirit would nudge. I would try to shake off the nudging and justify my inaction.

Finally, after months of arguing with the Holy Spirit—not at all a recommended pursuit—I did what I should have done many months previously. I yielded to the nudging of the Holy Spirit and contacted the other person in the only way that I could. I wrote an email. I apologized and I explained.

Then, I waited to see what price I may have to pay. Had I lost a friend? Would this person think I’m crazy? Would this person find it easier to erase me from memory than to accept my apology? Or, will God prompt this person to respond with grace and forgiveness?

You see there is a price that we must pay if we determine to be obedient—even if we unnecessarily lengthen the amount of time before we take the action we knew all along we should have taken. In this case, because of my own foolishness, I paid a double price: the first one for delaying action and the second one if my action itself results in some negative result.

God revealed His intentions through the Prophet when Jeremiah recorded God’s words in Jeremiah 7:23:

Obey me, and I will be your God and you will be my people. Walk in obedience to all I command you, that it may go well with you.

I urge you to learn from my mistake. When God nudges you to take action, don’t hesitate. Do what He is leading you to do. Accept the fact that obedience extracts a price. But also recognize that the reward for obedience greatly outweighs whatever it might cost you.

By the way, this person graciously accepted my apology. Even though this person had never given any indication whatsoever that he or she had even perceived my mistake, the record is now fully clear. I have renewed my own trust in myself. If only I hadn’t waited so long to do what I knew was the right thing to do.

 

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