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If You Love Me, You Will Obey What I Command

Updated: Feb 20, 2020

by Dave Miller

Previous Chapter 4.6 | Next Chapter 5.2

Five kids makes life, well, interesting. The week after Halloween my kids had a secret stash of enough candy to create a diabetic outbreak in our entire subdivision. The oldest three boys tucked it all away in the two miniature cabinets ubiquitously installed above the refrigerator. Shrewd choice, since our two youngest children are twin girls and daily practice becoming one of the world’s unstoppable forces. However, the location did not deter the three-year-old dynamite duo.

I walked into the kitchen and there, standing on the counter, was one daughter with the other standing on her shoulders. Stretched to the last inch of reach, big toe digging into her sister’s shoulder, the other was raking every piece of reachable candy into the floor below. This dad was caught between concerns for safety and pride of ingenuity. I made the most logical response. I went to the bedroom to encourage my wife to take a peek. My wife asked the obvious question to the girls, “What were you two doing?” The youngest responded, “Sissy!” while pointing a blaming finger at the other who had already shoved two Tootsie Rolls in and was unwrapping a third. Blame and responsibility, two choices we rarely acknowledge, even when obvious.


Tale As Old As Time

For 12 years as a student pastor I heard, hundreds of Bible questions:

  • Were there dinosaurs in the Bible?

  • What is a leviathan?

  • Will there be surfing in heaven?

  • Does God really know everything?

  • How can an axe head float?

But one question came up more than any other. It had many different forms:

  • Why did God create Satan if he knew he would ruin everything?

  • Why did God give man free will if He knew man would sin?

  • Why did God put the tree in the garden knowing Adam and Eve would eat the fruit?

  • How can God punish me if he knew I would be born a sinner?

The common theme was always, “How could God?” God always seems to be the one to blame and the one held responsible. Man continually finds ways to make brokenness God’s fault.


Should it surprise us that God tends to always take the brunt of our search for someone to blame? I mean, it has been that way since the start. Once more, let’s go all the way back to the garden called Eden, where life was perfect. It was a story made in heaven, just waiting to be written … but there was that “one” tree.




Until there's #NoPlaceLeft...

 

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