But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.
“See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.”
Deuteronomy 30: 14-20

This passage of scripture became real to me around my 18th birthday.
It was around this time that the Lord gave me a visual picture of two roads in my life. One road required unquestionable obedience to God and the other way required I do whatever I wanted when I wanted. One road led to LIFE and the other road lead to death and destruction. Although I hadn’t lived a long life yet, I had enough experience at life to understand these roads weren’t necessarily talking about salvation, and I could look back over the previous years and understand what walking in death and destruction meant. Although I had accepted Christ as my Savior at age 6, it was after receiving this image from God that I truly made the choice to walk the path of obedience…REGARDLESS of what it meant I must do.
Because let’s face it. Sometimes obedience doesn’t make sense to my understanding of the world. Sometimes obedience is completely opposite of my feelings or desires.
But that image of the road of life and blessing contrasted with the road of death and destruction always pops into my head when I’m faced with a decision.
Which is why one of the mantra’s spoken often in our house is “obedience is always better in the end”.
I could give a million examples of when hard obedience has resulted in blessings for us, but today I’m going to just give one. The one I spoke briefly about two days ago. The one involving Pine Cove.
Pine Cove has been our family vacation for the past 2 summers. We rarely get time away just by ourselves, and Pine Cove had been such a refreshing time for our family which is why it was hard to listen to God last fall when I knew He told me we weren’t to register for the summer of 2011. It took me about four days before I said anything to Brent. When I finally told Brent I didn’t have a peace about registering for Pine Cove again, Brent stated that he didn’t really either. It was confirmed then. God was saying no, and even though everything in me wanted to convince myself that it wasn’t really a big deal to register for camp again, I knew in my spirit that for some unknown reason, God didn’t not want me to register.
Obedience doesn’t always make sense.
But we obeyed. We canceled our spot for the summer of 2011, we payed off our student loan, saved some money, gave generously, and listened to our children constantly ask how long it would be before it was okay to go back to Pine Cove.
About March, Brent and I started getting sad that we weren’t going to go this year. Making the kids birthday books and looking at all our pictures from Pine Cove and remembering all the fun memories made it hard to think that NOT going was the best thing for our family.
Then we get a phone call. I like to say it was from God. A random phone call telling us that a spot was open for week 1 of camp, and we could have it if we wanted to. All we needed to pay was the deposit and the spot was ours. An almost free vacation from God.
I started crying. Not so much as out of excitement but out of amazement that God would bless us with this type of gift. My oldest was standing next to me when I got off the phone and told her what Pine Cove said. Her blue eyes got all teary, she covered her mouth with her hand, jumped up and down, and started yelling, “God gave us Pine Cove?!!! God really gave us Pine Cove?!!!!!!!”
The moment with her was priceless, and I’m pretty sure neither one of us will ever forget what God blessed us with that day.
This story isn’t about the fact that we got to go to Pine Cove…although we had an incredible time while we were there. This story is more about walking the path of LIFE.
Obedience is hard and it doesn’t always result in a free vacation, but regardless, God always blesses obedience.
The past weeks have been such an incredible reminder to our whole family that obedience is ALWAYS better. We can’t see the future, but God can.
I write this today so that I will always remember to obey, regardless of what I am walking through. I know I can trust that God is good and He does good and I am so thankful for how He chose to bless us this summer.
I pray today we all choose to obey the ONE who knows the path to LIFE,regardless of our emotions, desires, or feelings.