Obedience

Once a week I meet a young lady and we discuss life and we are going over the lineage of Jesus from Geneses to New Testament. This week was on Joseph and I told her that with the Old Testament stories so many I totally do not understand. Mainly because of culture and time, I think half the men were crazy and as my children would say, they would have shot you mom back in olden days because of your mouth.  I totally agree, I probably would have been one of the radical women of those days.
 I don't get the way they lived back then.  But I told Anderson, when I read over the different books and people I try to think of things that pertain to my life and way of living today. Joseph is one of my favorite people in the Bible, I know in the beginning he was a little cocky and maybe thought a little more of himself than the average boy. But, I like men who are confident (I raised one). I do believe that Joseph was humbled after being sold and put in prison and these things made him the man he became. I talked with Anderson about how Joseph was obedient to God and because of his obedience he was blessed in many ways. She asked me about what are ways we can be obedient to God these days. I was explaining that I have always told my children that even when we don't like something but we know that is exactly what God (the Bible)  would want us to do, doing it is obedience. For instance I shared Tithing as a example, I asked her if she tithed or believed in tithing. We had a great discussion on how its not that God needs our money, he wants to see if we are willing to be obedient, to give up control and trust him with the one thing that most people think they need.
I asked her to keep a watch this next month and see where she was spending her money, and as the verse goes, where your heart is at is where you put your treasure.  So if all her money is going to earthly pleasure then that is where her heart is and that is something that she needs to figure out. She is wanting things in life, new job, adventure, etc.  and she is waiting on answers from God I told her she might have her answers already but God will not use her in mighty ways if she is not obedient with the small stuff. He wants to know that he can trust us with the little things first before he puts us in situation where we need to know the big things.