FOLLOWING THE PROCESS                BY Forrest McMurray

A young man trained with his master.  The movement was a strike with the left hand and a step forward with the right foot. The young man trained everyday and met with his master for correction every week. He trained for weeks and months and years. After about 5 years of practicing this movement the young man had become very slick in his delivery of it. He had become very fast and very powerful in this movement. He had begun to think that he had learned everything their was to know about the movement. But after 5 years of training his master told him, ok, the movement is actually done by stepping in with the left foot.

For years the student had been told to step with the right foot. For years the master had been preparing the young man’s right side to assume a proper angle and he had been teaching the young man’s left leg to drop and stay loose. When the young man began doing the movement with his left foot his speed doubled and his power even increased. This increase though would not have been possible if he tried to skip those 5 years of preparation. The Master told him that the process of training is just as important as the actual movement. 

Why does God require us to be baptized for the remission of our sins? Couldn’t he forgive us without that action?  Why does God instruct that elders should shepherd their own flocks and not help out with other flocks? Why did God have so many instructions when it came to the building of the temple and the tabernacle? Why did God specify a certain type of wood be used in constructing the ark? Why did God have so many rules for the Levites?

It appears that to God, the process is just as important as what we may see as the end result.  Following God’s process shows him that we trust him, respect him, and regard his word as holy. When we abandon his instruction and try to take a shortcut, to get what we think the desired end should be, we will never get the end we desire. And we put ourselves in God’s place. Our goal should be obedience to God’s instruction even if we don’t understand the motives behind it. 

1 Samuel 15:22 - And Samuel said, “Has the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams.