Whether it pleases me or not

So they said to Jeremiah, "Let the LORD be a true and faithful witness between us, if we do not do according to everything which the LORD your God sends us by you. Whether it is pleasing or displeasing, we will obey the voice of the LORD our God to whom we send you, that it may be well with us when we obey the voice of the LORD our God." – Jeremiah 42.5-6

Whether it pleases us or not, we will obey the Lord, because it will go well when we obey the Lord.

That sounds like a simple statement, but it says a lot.

We will obey God even when it is not what we think we want.

That is a hard thing to do because none of us like what we don’t like, do we? It takes great faith to say ‘I will do what God says, full stop. I will do what God says even when I take no pleasure in it because I trust that what He wants done is best.’

It is sort of what we ask our children to do. They don’t always like it. They can get angry when we tell them. They can sit and stew and hold a grudge. They can clearly show their displeasure. Just like us and God.

But hopefully our kids learn to do what we ask because they learn to trust us. If we are parenting properly we don’t send our kids on especially onerous tasks just because we can. We try to teach unity and teamwork and everyone doing their part. And sometimes we do it because we love them and what is best in the long run.

If we really trust God we ought to be able to do the same. We ought to be able to say ‘yes Lord, I will’ even though we can’t see the wisdom or the good because He does see the wisdom and the good.

And isn’t that what faith is all about?