What Will It Take?

We can be so stubborn sometimes.  How often has God made perfectly clear what he expects from us, and yet we continue to refuse or negotiate with God?  Looking from the outside we are pathetic!  Think about it: The Creator of the Universe, God Almighty, who with one thought creates and destroys, had given us instructions and we say, "I'll think about it?" 

I was reading in Exodus today about the plagues that were placed on the Egyptians.  Moses tells Pharaoh to let God's people go so they can go out into the desert and sacrifice to God.  As Pharaoh refused and met plague after plague he got closer and closer to doing all that God had said, but it was only inch by inch: "you can sacrifice in this land" and "only then men can go."  Pharaoh finally relented under the powerful hand of God, but then reconsidered and sent his army after the Israelites, only to have his army destroyed by God.

We do the same thing.  God tells us to do something and we go through a process:

1. Refusal - either through "forgetting" or outright defiance
2. Counter-offers - negociating with God on what we are willing to do
3. Agreement - but not following through
4. Either obedience or disobedience at the end

I wonder if our responses would change if God sent the plagues on us.  Would a plague of frogs (both living and dying) filling our home bring us to obedience.  What about living with gnats or flies always flying around us or landing on us?  Would we be more willing to do what God asks us to do?  Perhaps boils covering our body or locusts or hail would do the trick.  What about the killing of our first born? That's what got Pharaoh to agree, at least temporarily.

What would it take for you to actually do what God wants us to do?  Remember who God is before you decide not to obey.