Hard Obedience

 January 16, 2023

Somewhere around sixty years ago, Billy Graham featured as one of his crusade guests a woman whose life had been characterized by alcoholism, drug addiction, three failed marriages, and an attempt at suicide. She was born into great wealth, but was miserable. Until she met Christ. Her name was Gert Behanna, and I’ll never forget a story she told. 

She was fifty-three when she was converted, and at that age somehow got on a speaking circuit, giving witness to the power of the Gospel to change a life such as she had lived. On this particular night, she was tired…bone tired. Just plain worn out. She didn’t want to go on stage that night, but knew she was the expected speaker of the evening, so reluctantly left her hotel room to go to the conference center and address the women there.

All the time she was speaking, she said her inner conversation was, “I don’t want to be here.” When she concluded her speech and gave the invitation to receive Christ, to her surprise, the altar was filled with women responding to the Gospel call, a far greater response than she had experienced at other times when she felt the Holy Spirit working through her. She was puzzled.

Gert came to the conclusion that obedience to Christ when one doesn’t feel like obeying was the sincerest kind of obedience, an obedience that God honors because there was nothing in it for her. 

Some days, we just feel “off.” Some days, it seems that God is elsewhere, working through someone else, but surely not me. Opening the Bible, the words seem just so many markings on the page. Prayer is forced and stilted. The desire is present, but the heart is cold and unresponsive, and no discernible reason can be found. The day is grey and the horizon dimmed by mist and clouds. There is no real storm, but the calm is ominous and heavy.

At such times, simply obeying God is a matter of just putting one foot ahead of the other. The joy of serving has melted away, and only the drudgery of it remains. At such times, I remember this woman, along with some of the Biblical saints. We read the stories of marvelous interventions of God, forgetting that often years separated those interventions, and the saints had to just soldier on. They did so, and we honor their faithfulness. As we follow their example, I can only hope and pray that someday in the distant future, someone will read my story, including the dry, desert chapters, and see God’s faithfulness in the midst. One thing I know: that will only be possible if I do as Gert Behanna did years ago, and simply do what needs to be done, whether I feel like it or not. Who knows? Maybe God will use the difficult testimony to break through the wall of resistance in someone’s heart.