I can’t think of a place in Scripture where Jesus calls us to worship Him, but He does call us to obedience throughout Scripture.  Obedience is one of those words that will often times make us twitch.  We will feel the weight of not obeying, we will feel guilty, we will feel defeated, and some of us even feel indifference when it comes to obedience.

It doesn’t mean we don’t try to be obedient because we do.  We will tie strings on our finger to help us remember, make sticky notes, wear wrist bands, tell our friends to punch us in the face when we disobey, and it might work for a little while, but it seems like over time we slowly wander back into a pattern of disobedience.

I have found that we will always struggle with obedience until we know the One who is calling us to obedience and when we know Him it will move us to a place of obedience.  I am not really sure how it happens, but as we spend time with Him we will start to look like Him, live like Him, and love other people like He does. 2 Corinthians describes our relationship with Jesus as an unveiling so that when we look upon Jesus we reflect the glory of God and we are transformed into His likeness.

Honestly, I don’t know how this works, but I know when I spend time with people they end up rubbing off on me so that I pick up their characteristics.  Even when I see movies about mafia gangsters I walk out of the movie talking like a mafia gangster.  It is pretty annoying to my wife, but I can’t help it!

Practically this means if I want to see patience in my life I don’t try really hard to be patient, but I spend time with Jesus and I see how patient Jesus is with me.  When I want to see humility in my life I don’t try to become humble but I am  reminded of my sin and His grace.  When I want to see acts of service in my life I get to know the one who served me by laying down His life for my sin at the cross.  If we see Christianity just as obedience then we have reduced it to religion, but when we are in relationship with Jesus then obedience will become the bi-product of our relationship.