For most of my life, obedience meant one thing: doing what you’re told, whether you want to or not. Rules. Compliance. Gritting your teeth and getting it done. That’s the definition I grew up with, and it’s the one I walked into this week carrying.
By the end of seven days, I didn’t just get a new definition. I got a new relationship with the word.
Love, Not Fear
The first shift was small but it changed everything downstream: obedience isn’t God asking me to comply. It’s Him asking me to respond to love. When it’s about sharing the Word, encouraging someone, loving well — that part’s clear to me. Where it gets murky is the bigger stuff. Career. Moving. People I’m supposed to reconcile with, and doors I’m supposed to close. That’s where “just obey” gets a lot more complicated than it sounds on a Sunday.
I had to be honest, too — I’ve seen obedience used the wrong way. Twisted into a tool to get people to do what someone else wanted, dressed up as if it were God’s will when it wasn’t. So the question I keep asking now isn’t just “am I obeying,” it’s “whose desire is this actually serving?”
Learning to Actually Listen
I’ve spent most of my walk with God talking to Him. Somewhere in the last few months, I started actually trying to sit still and listen back. And here’s the strange, humbling thing — I do hear Him. Not in some mystical audible way I can prove to anyone else, but in a pattern I’ve learned to recognize: I’ll pray about something specific, a character trait I want changed, a relationship I want mended, and the exact right scripture will land in front of me the next morning. Or someone will say words back to me that they had no way of knowing I’d prayed.
I still question myself constantly. Am I making this up? But I’ve landed on a posture I’m at peace with: I tell God I’m going to keep walking in a direction until He stops me. If it’s Him, confirm it. If it’s not, tear it down. I’d rather move in faith and be corrected than sit still out of fear of getting it wrong.
🪨 A Stone Laid Down
Romans 10:17 — “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”
1 Kings 19:12 — the still small voice, after the wind, earthquake, and fire had already passed.
Psalm 46:10 — “Be still, and know that I am God.”
A prayer over this stone: Lord, tune my ears to Your voice above every other noise trying to get my attention. I don’t need to prove it to anyone else that it’s You — I just need to keep showing up quiet enough to hear it. Confirm what’s Yours. Tear down what isn’t. I trust You with the difference. Amen.
Moving Without the Full Map
This is the part of the week that felt the most like my actual life. I started this whole journey as a personal 75-day commitment — clean eating, prayer, water, getting my house in order, drawing nearer to God. That’s it. That’s all I asked for. And somewhere along the way, it turned into something I didn’t plan: a call to build community for other people, not just myself.
Community has genuinely been one of the hardest things for me to build outside of the small pockets where I already serve, because I picked up a second part-time job just to stay financially afloat. So I asked God plainly — how do I build community in a season with this little time? Social media was the answer I kept landing on. Not to be another creator chasing followers, but to actually build something people could connect around — studies shaped by whatever God was working on in me that week, then a website to hold it all so it could compound instead of disappearing into a feed.
I asked Him to confirm it. He has. So I keep building — studies, prayers, blog posts — one layer at a time, trusting I’m not the only person walking by faith instead of sight, trying to figure out what obedience looks like on an ordinary Tuesday.
The Wrestling That’s Honest, Not Resistant
I won’t pretend this assignment is one I asked for or particularly want some days. I asked for a personal 75 days. I got handed the responsibility of pointing other people toward Jesus too. That’s a bigger weight than I signed up for, and I’ve had honest moments of wrestling with it — using everything I know about content and platforms to try to make it easier or faster my way, instead of His.
But there’s a real difference between wrestling honestly with God and outright resisting Him. Resistance is doing it my way, on my timeline, because I want to. Wrestling is staying tethered to the Word the whole time I’m asking questions. I know which one I’m in. And even if another way never comes — if this stays hard the whole time — I trust He’s not done with me yet.
🪨 A Stone Laid Down
Luke 22:42 — “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.”
Genesis 32:26 — “I will not let thee go, except thou bless me” — Jacob wrestling with God through the night.
James 4:17 — “Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.”
A prayer over this stone: Lord, I’m not going to pretend this is easy or that I asked for all of it. But I’d rather wrestle honestly with You than resist You quietly while calling it faith. Not my way — Yours. Even when the way doesn’t come the way I hoped, I trust You’re not finished with what You started in me. Amen.
Doors I Didn’t Force Open
Building this hasn’t looked like striving. It’s looked like obedience opening things striving never could. I don’t fully know what I’m doing — I’m learning it in real time, and my love for God only deepens the more I do. Some days something has to get neglected so the study or the writing can happen, and it costs me. But getting to know Him better has been worth every trade.
Watching The Chosen did something for my heart this week I didn’t expect — seeing Jesus laugh, dance, hug, love, and call people who were every bit as unqualified as I feel. It made the grace real in a way I could actually hold onto. God’s promises can feel distant on the page. Watching them dramatized made them feel like something I could actually reach.
I’m still lonely some days. I still don’t have it all figured out. I keep dropping the stone anyway, trusting God to walk me to the next one.
What Obedience Looks Like Now
If you’d asked me on Day 1 what obedience meant, I’d have said rule-following. Now I’d say it’s love, made visible, one ordinary yes at a time — not performed in the big moments and ignored in the small ones, but built the same way any lifestyle gets built: daily, imperfectly, on purpose.
I’m not waiting for the version of me that has it all together. I’m just showing up as the one who’s still learning, still building, still laying stones down — and trusting that’s enough for today.
If any part of this week found you — the wrestling, the waiting, the wondering if you’re even hearing Him right — you’re not walking it alone. I’d love to hear where you are in the comments.