obeying God or man?

Obeying God or Man? (Read time ≈ 8 minutes)
Acts 5:29 (ESV)
29 But Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than men.
 
                We live in a world that is full of self proclaimed gods. I am fully aware that if you went to the people around you in your life, be it family, friends, co-workers, or bosses, they probably wouldn’t admit this or call themselves a “god”. However, while they may refuse to admit that title upon themselves, they at the same time expect you to please them and do things they want you to do OVER what God (notice the capital ‘G’), the real God, Elohim, Creator of the universe and Creator of you, wants you to do. We live in a culture that is far more willing to proclaim authority over you and your life and not only claim to be worthy of your submission but will deny God entirely. We live in a culture that profanes God and rejects Him. If we allow this to dictate our actions we run the risk of reducing ourselves to the futile mind that Paul warns us of in Romans 1:18-32. We know the truth of God but no longer honor Him with our lives. This happens when over time we begin to obey man rather than God. This, at times, may be the recipe to some kind of illusions of success in this world, but it will not stand the testing fires of eternity (1 Corinthians 3:10-15 **PLS READ THAT ONE**.
 
                The Apostles answered “We must obey God rather than men.”. We read this and we say, “Oh yeah! Get ‘em Pete and the bros!!!”. We applaud their boldness and bravery as they are faced with some powerful men, telling them to stop preaching the name of Jesus and they respond with a big, fat, NOPE! And on top of it, they double down and remind them that they were the ones who crucified Christ and they were going to continue to preach His name! Gets you amped up, doesn’t it? Obedience to God was of the utmost importance to Peter and the apostles. That is very clear. Then we close our Bibles… share that verse on facebook with a few fire emojis and 100 emojis and then we turn around and bow down to the world around us…. At least, I hope not. We too, must obey God rather than man. But to which we might say, “Sure, but no one is telling me not to preach the name of Jesus, so I think I’m doing good.” Well, firstly, I ask, but are you preaching the name of Jesus? No one will tell you to stop doing something you’re not doing. Okay, okay, that was a cheap shot, not what I came here to talk about… but think on it anyway. Actually, I came to talk about the finer details of obeying God rather than man. As I said, we live in a culture that profanes God and rejects him, rather than obeys God. So, if that is true, shouldn’t we then question all things about our culture against the Word of God and what He wants for us, as His children?
 
                If the culture is strongly pushing something as good and/or necessary then you should stop and think to yourself, “But what does God say?” The world around us tells us how to act, how to talk, what to wear, where to go, when/if to go to college, when to get a job, when (and how) to get married, when (and how) to have kids and how many to have, what a successful life looks like, what to eat, where to eat it and who with, what to inject into your body(yes I went there), who to spend time with, or who not to spend time with, what the ideal life looks like, healthy habits, and acceptable habits, they tell you how to look at yourself and how to look at others, they tell you what life styles are okay and what ones aren’t, they tell you what you must accept and what you must reject. Yet so many Christians today just go with the flow, the path of least resistance. They don’t look at the finer details of day-to-day life and ask, “Is God okay with this?”. How many generations of messed up, anxious, depressed, addicted, broken people have to pass by before we Christians begin to question the status quo? How much pain do we have to suffer from the “it’s just the way people do things today” before we ask ourselves that question… “Am I obeying man rather than God?” What does His word have to say about my everyday life? What does His word have to say about the way I go about my life when big decisions loom and hard choices come? Am I just doing what everyone expects? Or am I doing what God commands?
 
                In the face of obvious Christian persecution of the Gospel it is quite easy to look at situations and say “Oh yeah, that’s not good! Obey God rather than those men”. But in day-to-day life, the things that will mark us “weird”, “different”, even the occasional “cult”. Are we willing to do these things in obedience to God in direct defiance of the culture we live in today because we desire to obey God rather than man and because we desire to obey God rather than the ways of man? See, this is where we get lost at times… the ways of man can be more influential on our day to day lives more than people in our faces about our faith. If we don’t know what God says about it then we will inevitably go with what the world says about it. It’s time to examine our lives and ask the question about all areas of our life, “Am I obeying God or man with this area of my life?”.