Or at least at I hope it is.
Recently, I met two new people. Shaun, was at a business prayer meeting I attended in Vancouver, WA (link to his blog) and Tim, is a pastor I met online (link to his blog).
And they both essentially told me the same thing: “Josh, I’ve read your blog and I hope you keep writing on it.”
I thought, Yeah, maybe I should start writing there more.
So I pulled up this blog to see when the last time I posted was and it was 11 months ago! Wow.
And then I read my last post and felt convicted when I read what I wrote:
When I heard, “to obey is better than sacrifice” I knew God was referring to something specific in my life: writing. More specifically, writing on this blog, Beyond Cliches.
I haven’t been writing on here even though I believe God wants me to. I have a million excuses why I keep “putting it off”.
Then I thought, Great, I’m not only disobeying God… I’m doing it publicly. How embarrassing.
Yes, I know. I shouldn’t care what other people think, only what God thinks. You’re right.
But I’m just being honest about how I felt. Why? Because someone else may be feeling the same way about something and hopefully this helps. Plus, I appreciate it when people are honest in their writing.
So that’s where I found myself this morning as I sat there sipping my coffee: convicted but motivated to act.
Let’s be honest… it’s not easy to obey when you know in your heart you’ve disobeyed. Especially when it’s not the first time.
There’s the temptation to ignore that area of life. To move on. To say, “Yeah, I’ll get to that later.” But “later” usually means never.
Therefore, the best remedy is to simply repent and then take a step in the right direction. And for me that means writing this post. For you that probably means something different.
But I believe “delayed obedience” is better than never obeying (and of course obeying right away is better than both).
Here’s one last thought I’ll leave you with. It’s tempting to make bold resolutions at times like this:
“I’ll write in here every day for a year!”
“I’ll never take a drink again!”
“I’ll start exercising every day for the next 6 months!”
“I’ll read the Bible all the way through this year!”
And then comes the day we mess up. We don’t write. We forget to exercise. We fall behind on our Bible reading plan. We relapse.
Then what?
You feel bad because you realize you can’t keep the internal commitments you’ve made to yourself and to others. It’s not a fun feeling. But I encourage you to take advantage of those times because it simply means willpower alone is not enough to succeed. It’s times like this we realize that yes, without God, we are powerless over certain things and that it causes our lives to become unmanageable.
But don’t stop there… the next step is to realize that the power we need to overcome anything, or do anything meaningful with our lives, comes from God.
We may be powerless. But God wants to empower us by His Holy Spirit. I really believe that. Do you?
About Josh Monen
Josh is a Christian entrepreneur who lives in Central Texas with his wife and 4 kids.
Glad to see you back at it! Usually the thing I want least to do is the thing which will carry the greatest reward.
Thank you for taking to task the issue of “delayed obedience is disobedience.” “Not to delay” is mentioned in Psalm 119:60 and it is better to obey than to sacrifice. However, Psalm 119:59 indicates some contemplation that there was a lack of obedience in the first place. This is emphasized even more in Jesus’ parable about two sons. One declined the fathers request and regretted it and then obeyed. It is better than the one who said he would, and did not. In which case, delayed is better than not.
Thank you for your writings.
Thank you Kevin. I appreciate the comment and scripture!