Freeing Obedience

Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread.

I'm Tom Felton and I titled today's reading, Freeing Obedience. The look on the young teen's face reflected angst and shame. Heading into the 2022 Winter Olympics, her success as a figure skater was unparalleled. A string of championships that made her a lock to win a gold medal. But then a test revealed a banned substance in her system. With the immense weight of expectations and condemnation pressing down on her, she fell multiple times during her free skate program and didn't stand on the victor's platform, no medal.

She displayed artistic freedom and creativity on the ice prior to the scandal, but now an accusation of a broken rule bound her to crushed dreams. From the early days of humanity, God has revealed the importance of obedience as we exercise our free will. Disobedience led to devastating effects for Adam, Eve, and all of us as sin brought brokenness and death to our world.

It didn't have to be that way. In Genesis chapter two, God had told the two, you are free to eat from any tree but one. Thinking their eyes would be opened and they would be like God, they ate of the band tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Sin, shame, and death followed. God graciously provides freedom and so many good things for us to enjoy. In love, he also calls us to obey him for our good. May he help us choose obedience and find life full of joy and free of shame.

Today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading is from Genesis chapter two, verses 15 through 25. The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the Lord God commanded the man, you are free to eat from any tree in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it, you will certainly die. The Lord God said, it is not good for the man to be alone.

I will make a helper suitable for him. Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them. And whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky, and all the wild animals.

But for Adam, no suitable helper was found. So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep. And while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man said, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man. That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife and they become one flesh.

Adam and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame. Let's pray. Father, thank you for the true freedom and life found in choosing obedience to you. Please help us honor you in all we do and say. It's in Jesus name we pray. Amen. Today's encouragement was provided by Our Daily Bread Ministries.