The Gift of Obedience
Jee-Hoon Krska, MIT '90, SM '94, PhD '97, never thought that she would be a piano teacher. She didn’t study electrical engineering to be a piano teacher. Her mother did not want her to be a piano teacher. But, when God called her to give up her life as an electrical engineer to teach piano, she obeyed. And the truth is that, while the details of each person’s situation are different, God calls every one of His people to be completely obedient to Him, and to Him alone, willing to sacrifice everything else in order to receive the greatest blessing of all: God Himself.
Obedience is willingness to sacrifice:
When a rich young man asked Jesus what he had to do to inherit eternal life, Jesus answered, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me” (Mark 10:17-21). The rich young man went away sorrowful, because, as we are told, “he had great possessions.” The young man is not named, but is only introduced as a “rich young man” and as a “ruler.” To give up his possessions, therefore, meant to give up his whole identity.
Jee-Hoon’s testimony echoes the exact same point, but with a different resolution. After finishing three degrees in electrical engineering and spending twenty additional years in the semiconductor field, God told her it was time to serve Him as a piano teacher. He asked her to give up her identity as it had been defined by decades of study and work and instead to follow Him to something completely different. Unlike the rich young man, Jee-Hoon said yes.
Today, she directs Keys 2 Success, a life-changing nonprofit that provides free music education to children in public schools and project housing in Newark, NJ.
Obedience is based on trust:
Jee-Hoon was able to say yes to God because she knew that she could trust Him. She trusted Him because she had seen how He had provided for her at earlier points in her life. She describes coming to MIT and being pushed to the limits of her own capabilities. One night, with a difficult unfinished assignment due the next day, she decided that, rather than keep striving, “maybe I would trust God with my time, and I would give Him two hours of my life out of the week.” Ultimately she completed the assignment, not by her own efforts, but because a classmate she didn’t know offered to help her. Having seen how God had provided for her when she could not provide for herself, she knew that she could trust Him to do so again.
Ultimately, the question for each of us, then, Christian or not, is this: whom do you trust?
We all trust in something, whether it’s our own abilities, a leader, or even something as nebulous as an ideal. And trust translates to obedience; no sacrifice will be too extreme for you. But is it worthy of that trust? Are you sure it will not fail you? In the end, there is only one God who is worthy of trust, because there is only one God who is able and willing to protect and provide for you no matter the circumstances.
Obedience is a gift:
The end of the story is not so grim. While obedience is accomplished through sacrifice, its purpose is to free us to receive what God gives. God commands us to make sacrifices because He wants to give us something infinitely better than anything we already have: Himself.
Whenever God calls us to sacrifice, therefore, it is never just for the purpose of taking something away from us. There is always a blessing, although sometimes it is surprising or not in the form we’d expect. God didn’t call Jee-Hoon to give up her career as a semiconductor engineer just for the sake of devotion. He called her to give it up so that she could found Keys 2 Success. In the same way, He called her to give up those two hours of her week and the hope of completing her lab on her own, so that she could receive the lab’s completion as a gift rather than an accomplishment.
In this way, our God is not like the other things that call for our obedience. God doesn’t need us to serve Him and He doesn’t ask us to work for Him. When He was crucified almost 2000 years ago, He declared the work was finished. There is nothing for us to add now to this finished work, nor can we undo it. The obedience that God calls us to is to sacrifice the burden of responsibility to Him, and to rest in the results of His accomplishment.
Obedience is communal:
The purpose of obedience, therefore, is not to do something for God, but to allow what He has done already to transform us. And this is impossible to do on our own, for the simple reason that God’s vision for us, since the beginning of creation, has always been one of a people walking together with Him.
Jee-Hoon’s story attests to the vital role of community in practicing obedience. She did not decide to trust God with two hours of her week because she just thought she ought to, or because she had received some special revelation. She did so because her roommate had been faithfully calling her to seek God more diligently all that year. When she later realized that she needed to change her lifestyle, she did not do it by force of will, but with the support and example of her friends at Wilson House. When we follow Him, we are necessarily and inevitably drawn together as His people.
Jee-Hoon, bottom center, with friends from Wilson House during her studies at MIT. Octet Collaborative board member David Williamson is at upper left!
To be obedient to God, therefore, is to follow Him in fellowship with others. He calls us to sacrifice, to set down the things we cling to so that we can receive the gifts of His great work together. Lovingly and patiently, God is shaping us into His people, freed from the false security of idols to trust and abide in Him forever. This is the life that He is preparing for us in eternity, one where all His people from every nation, language, and time are brought together in His presence forever. This is the gift that we receive by obedience.
