For the past several years I’ve been working on a non-fiction book. The book’s title is Rescuing the Hidden Hearts of Men. And I’m still working on it.
It’s tough for a writer of fiction – an author known for writing action/adventure/suspense novels – to break into the world of non-fiction. It’s just a different animal, with different requirements and different expectations. And I’m still working at it.
But, in the meantime, as the work goes on, I hope to share some of the insights or ideas offered in Rescuing the Hidden Hearts of Men and present them under the Blog Heading, Living the Rescued Life.
The book Rescuing the Hidden Hearts of Men is primarily, but not solely, written for men. Its subtitle is And the Women who Love Them. Because most men carry the wounds, damage and traumas inflicted upon them in their past – and the false self-image those wounds imprinted upon their minds – into their relationships and their marriages. And both partners generally suffer from the consequences of those traumatic memories.
There’s just too much in the book to share those insights and ideas here in detail. But what I can do, is give you a little nugget each time I write a post in Living the Rescued Life. I hope you find these entries thought-provoking and helpful. Here’s today’s nugget.
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The main theme in Rescuing the Hidden Hearts of Men is the absolute necessity of obedience in every man’s life. And how disobedience hinders God’s plan for our lives and his desire for us to know him intimately.
Andrew Murray, a South African missionary, pastor and author of several classic devotionals, wrote a small pamphlet titled Obedience. Murray writes that from the beginning of the Bible to its end – from Genesis to Revelation – God makes it clear that the one thing that is most important to him, the one thing that decides man’s destiny, is obedience.
Adam and Eve, Murray writes, were not required to show God their faith or humility or love. The requirement of Paradise was obedience. The writer of Revelation tells us that those who “do God’s commandments … have the right to the Tree of Life.” The first and last thing God asks of us is obedience.
I’ve found that it’s easier for me to be obedient in the big decisions I face than in the minutia of my daily life. There have been little things that God has asked me to do that I decided “are really not that important”. But it’s those little things that truly display my obedience to God. And without full, complete obedience – to both the significant and the inconsequential – God can never release his full and complete blessings into our hearts or upon our lives.
Why is this important? Because God wants to reveal himself. God wants us to know him – to experience him – and the fullness of his love for us. God wants each of us to know and believe how we look to him … not believe how we often look to ourselves. It’s a matter of revelation.
In his book, My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers writes: “Turn away for one second out of obedience, and darkness and death are at work at once … Immediately you obey, a flash of light comes … The tiniest fragment of obedience and heaven opens and the profoundest truths of God are yours straight away. God will never reveal more truth about Himself until you have obeyed what you know already.”
What has God been asking you to do, to stop, to change? As I have so often in my life, what have you been ignoring, or negotiating, with God about? And what problem, challenge or conflict have you been struggling to understand that has eluded all resolution?
Why not try the one-word antidote for blindness? Obedience.
