Hebrews 13:17 Obey those who rule over you, and be submissive, for they watch out for your souls, as those who must give account. Let them do so with joy and not with grief, for that would be unprofitable for you.
Okay let’s be honest, most people who hear that they need to ‘obey’ someone else, or ‘submit’ to them would laugh in your face. We live in a time where everyone is all about being in charge of themselves and ‘obeying’ no one, not even God. We want all the good things from God but choosing to obey Him is something that many of us choose to ignore. Truly giving everything to God has been a struggle for me. I always thought, subconsciously, that I need to go ahead and ‘fix’ things because I know better. (Reading that I thought I knew better than God could literally make me laugh out loud) I would turn to God when things got bad, not when they were still good. He was my last resort instead of my first turn. Being obedient is part of following God, of choosing God. I want to be God’s Girl. I have been really focusing and working on being obedient and letting God know that when he needs something, I am His girl! He can come to me with something and I will say yes without hesitation. I know that if I am not always obedient, I am still saved and still going to Heaven but I want more than that, I want to live a life with God leading and guiding my every step. I want people to see the light of God in me even if they don’t even know my name. I want everything I do and every move I make to glorify God. I want the whole enchilada. To do this I have to train myself to know the soft and gentle voice of God and to heed when He tells me something.
To really study Hebrews 13:17 about being obedient to God I first needed to look up in the dictionary what obeying and submitting exactly are.
Obey (Greek: “hupakou”) to listen attentively, to heed to a command or authority. Obeying means to listen and do what was commanded whether you agree or not.
Submit (Greek: “hupeiko”) Yielding, surrendering to authority. A conscious choice.
Notice how similar these words are in Greek. They seem to go hand in hand. First you must choose to submit yourself to someone, it is a conscious decision that you must make daily until it becomes normal. After this you will be obedient if you listen closely to the voice of God and do what he tells you and leads you to do, no matter if you think it is best or not. If I were to re-write this scripture with my definitions of obedience and submit it would go something like this:
Listen to and obey God, choose to surrender to His authority, because He has your best interest in His plans. Listen and yield to His plans with joy and happiness, not with strife and grumbling because that will only hinder you.
Even though in this world obey is a four letter word, I will continue to obey God because I know His plans for me are better than my own.
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