You Will Obey!

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

hot off the presses, here's the dinner doddle the jmfcsts will be reviewing tonight during dinner.  It's about the necessity of obedience.



here's a printable pdf version:

http://library.constantcontact.com/download/get/file/1101781144813-256/DOODLE58+Obey.pdf

[opebo]

There are hardly any cartoons on that, so I doubt your brood will look at it.

[Redalgo]

Aside from me initially thinking this was satirical and the dinner doodle doohickey certainly being the most authoritarian I have yet to see, reading the word "miracle" in all capital letters immediately made me think of the Insane Clown Posse. Which is unfortunate.

[Alcon]

yikes.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbhMTfBsD9g#t=2m43s

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

...you can get better and less alarming expressions of this sentiment from Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man if you're so inclined, and Portrait is, to say the least, not a particularly Christian book.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

So Christ isn't free to bless someone or perform a miracle in the absence of obedience?

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

So Christ isn't free to bless someone or perform a miracle in the absence of obedience?

what are you reading?

[John Dibble]

Yes, obey God, lest she get bored and destroy our universe in favor of making a more interesting one.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

the jmfcsts have devoured dinner and they dug the dinner doodle

[Yelnoc]

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

So Christ isn't free to bless someone or perform a miracle in the absence of obedience?

what are you reading?

a placemat that claims blessing and miracles is dependent on obedience, and that if God does otherwise he's being a bad parent. "When we are obedient to Christ, he is free to bless us, even miraculously." 

[afleitch]

the jmfcsts have devoured dinner and they dug the dinner doodle

Of course they would have. You've trained them well.

[John Dibble]

the jmfcsts have devoured dinner and they dug the dinner doodle

Of course they would have. You've trained them well.

Either that or they just humored their beloved yet slightly crazy father.

[patrick1]

It looks like jmf is having fish tonight because he certainly hauled in quite a few with this dinner doodle.

From a theological or sociological standpoint, I find this to be really simplistic. I suppose that may be the point for something geared toward families with children. One would think God calls us to a little more than a blind obedience and appeals to authority. Parents and a whole host of authority figures lead in the incorrect path, thus conflating obedience to God's word to the human level is problematic.  I suppose as a parent you could flesh it out a little more with the "something to talk about" section.  I just know that whenever I received an answer that I should do something "because I said so", it immediately made me question the credibility and motives of that person. 

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

So Christ isn't free to bless someone or perform a miracle in the absence of obedience?

what are you reading?

a placemat that claims blessing and miracles is dependent on obedience, and that if God does otherwise he's being a bad parent. "When we are obedient to Christ, he is free to bless us, even miraculously." 

Then you’re reading selectively, for it also said “And His miracles may depend on our obedience.”

The purpose of the doodle was not to give an exhaustive list of what miracles are possible under different obedience scenarios, but rather that God ultimately requires obedience.

There are obviously some blessings dependent upon obedience (e.g. salvation itself), but there are some miracles God does in order to lead us to obedience while we are still disobedient (e.g. his calling and his gift of faith).

Did Jesus reveal himself to Paul on the road to Damascus because Paul was being obedient?  Obviously not, for Paul was going around murdering Christians simply for their belief in Christ. So we can say that Paul was blessed with the gift of faith PRIOR to Paul's obedience. 

Or, take my example – was I living a life in obedience to God the night in Oct 92 when I received the Holy Spirit?  God knows I wasn’t.

Luke 5:23 “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

[RI]

Too many words in all caps. Not enough paragraph breaks.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Too many words in all caps. Not enough paragraph breaks.

and the paint in the bathroom is the wrong shade...all reasons to ignore the subject and move along.