I couldn’t believe the words that had come out of my mouth. I had just said I would be willing to go to a place I’d hated. When I’d left that country five years before, a friend asked if I would ever consider going back. I had adamantly avowed, “No. God would have to make me willing to go back.” Well, I guess He just did.

While obeying God’s commands isn’t always easy, sometimes obedience is a joy. It’s my pleasure to offer hospitality as God commands us. I deeply desire to bring peace and light to dark and difficult situations. I am happy to love God and, generally, not averse to loving my neighbor.

There are times, though, when obedience is a chore. I don’t want to forgive someone who deliberately makes my life harder. I do want to dish the dirt on someone who has hurt me. Then I have to fight my first response, put on my big girl pants (or perhaps my mature Christian pants), and choose to forgive and speak the best of others. Ugh! In those instances, the joy of obedience is not in the act itself. Rather, it is in knowing that my action honors God.

And then there are the times when obedience is a teeth-gritted act of will. Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Abba, Father… Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” (Mark 14:36) He did not want to face the trial ahead. He begged to be spared. Yet ultimately, He chose tearful, heart-heavy obedience to His Father.

My decision to obey God and return to a place I’d gladly left did not start with a cheerful heart, but it didn’t start with a heavy heart either. It started with choosing to lay down my resistance and say, “If You want me to do this, God, You will have to change my heart.”

Obedience isn’t always cheerfully chirping, “Anything, anywhere, God!” Sometimes it isn’t even a resigned, “Okay, if there’s no other way.” Sometimes obedience is simply being willing to be made willing.