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Q. Is duty an adequate motivation for obedience?

A. No. The service of God must become more than that to be either meaningful or sustained. When Christians feel their obedience to God is burdensome, it tells me that their coming to Him was seriously flawed. They were taught to mollify an angry God or to barter with a businesslike God rather than to admire and love a captivating, winsome God. So they started down the path of obeying commandments with a low motivation—one that eventually degenerated into legalism or failed altogether.

So what's the alternative?

All the serious personal relationships of our lives involve obligations and responsibility. Only in our relationship with God, however, do we tend to begin there. What if we thought of our relationship with Him like some of our more fundamental bonds with others? My attachment to parents, wife, or children all started with a longing and need within me that reached in the direction of someone else. As those relationships matured, I learned and performed various duties of obedience, nurture, and protection. From these obligations has come an undeniable sense of satisfaction and delight.

It's only when we begin by affirming God's grace that our hearts are led, unforced, to desire Him, eagerly perform our duties out of love, and find delight in the process from start to finish. When your soul has thirsted for God as a deer pants for water, the satisfaction of knowing Him and surrendering to Him is the ultimate fulfillment.

Rubel Shelly is a Tennessee pastor, writer, and co-editor of Wineskins Magazine.

Adapted from What Would Jesus Do Today? (Howard, 1998) by permission.

Copyright © 2003 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine.
Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity.

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Prayer for the Week

Lord, help me move beyond "have to" to "want to" in relating to Your commands.

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