To Obey Is Better Than Sacrifice

Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. 1 SAMUEL 15:22

If one word sums up the practical side of Amanda Smith’s religion, it is obedience. Not the grim obedience of a servant, but the glad obedience of a child to a Father she trusted. After her sanctification, she says, the Lord’s Prayer opened to her as if for the first time. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven: and she asked herself, how do the angels do God’s will? Do they hesitate? Do they question? Do they shrink? No. “Swift, prompt, loyal obedience by angels, and I asked God that I may do His will on earth like angels do it in heaven.”

Obedience in small things

Her book is striking for how small most of her tests were. Lift your hand in church. Give a tract to that lad on the streetcar. Put your two dollars in the collection for India. Go to that meeting although you are tired. Don’t go back and accept fifty cents for a three-weeks’ washing. All of it, she believed, mattered to God, because obedience is not measured by the size of the command but by the readiness of the heart.

He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much. LUKE 16:10

And she found, over and over, that small obediences opened large doors. The two dollars she gave to Mrs. Butler for the women of India, which she had meant for her daughter’s shoes, were followed that evening by three dollars under her plate at a friend’s tent. The tract given in fear to a young gentleman on Sixth Avenue brought him, she later heard, to peace with God. She did not obey in order to be rewarded, but she came to believe that God is no man’s debtor.

Confessed failures

What keeps this from being a boast is that she recorded her disobediences as carefully as her obediences. Once on a streetcar she had a tract in her hand and felt prompted to give it to a boy who got on. She hesitated, telling herself she would wait until some of the people got out, then until she got out. The car stopped, the lad jumped off and ran away, and she was left with words ringing in her: “His blood will I require at your hand.” She prayed all the way home for forgiveness.

When I say unto the wicked, O wicked man, thou shalt surely die; if thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand. EZEKIEL 33:8

On a voyage home, and again on a ship in the Bay of Bengal, she felt clearly led to speak to the passengers, and let herself be talked out of it — once by the reasonable thought that there had been enough for one day, once by the devil’s pious reminder not to cast pearls before swine. Both times she saw her mistake too late and wept before the Lord. “The mistakes of my life have been many,” she wrote. She called herself a coward, and marvelled at the patience of God with such cowards.

That confession is itself a teaching. Holiness, as she understood it, did not mean a record without failure. It meant a heart that wanted God’s will above everything, and was quick to confess and try again when it failed.

The ocean

The greatest test came in 1878. A friend invited her to England and offered to pay her way. Her first reaction was that England was for swell people, not for Amanda Smith, the coloured washerwoman. Then she prayed and became convinced, as surely as she knew her own existence, that God wanted her to go. And then she wrote a letter refusing — she was tired, it was so far, there was her daughter to think of — and posted it with a strange dread on her.

That evening an avalanche of darkness came over her. She locked the doors, turned down the lamp, and lay on the floor asking God what was wrong. At last the answer came, and it went straight to the point. “You are going about telling people to trust the Lord in the dark,” said the voice; and then, “you tell other people to do what you are not willing to do yourself.” She was afraid of the ocean. She was afraid to trust the Lord and go to England.

Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. PROVERBS 3:5

What followed was an hour of facing every fear. She saw the ship wrecked in a storm, heard the timbers crack and the people scream. She saw the telegram reaching her daughter, and her daughter wild with grief. She imagined her daughter falling sick while she was abroad, and dying, and being buried before her mother could get home. She saw each of her six living brothers and sisters sink and die, and went, on her knees, to each funeral. And then she said the sentence that became her motto: “But,” I said, “to stay here and disobey God—I can’t afford to take the consequence, I would rather go and obey God than to stay here and know that I disobeyed.”

A flood of light and peace came, and she sang. She sailed alone a few weeks later, and the voyage opened twelve years of work on three continents.

Counting the cost

That hour on the floor is the heart of her teaching on obedience. She did not pretend the cost was small. She looked at every possible loss, one by one, and let it pass before her. Only then did she say yes. That is exactly what Jesus asked of those who would follow Him: to sit down first and count the cost. The easy yes, given before the cost is faced, often collapses at the first storm. The yes given after the cost has been counted holds.

For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? LUKE 14:28

One caution. Her strong sense of God’s direct commands made her obedience vivid and brave. It can also, in less careful hands, make every whim a command and every hesitation a sin. The chapter before this one has set out her own safeguards. Obedience is owed to God’s voice, not to every impulse, and the primary place where His voice is heard is His Word. But where His will is plain, her counsel is the counsel of Samuel: to obey is better than sacrifice.

If ye love me, keep my commandments. JOHN 14:15

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Pray the Lord’s Prayer slowly today, stopping at Thy will be done. Ask yourself her question: do I hesitate, question, or shrink?

2. Name one small, plain obedience you have been putting off — an apology, a letter, a gift, a word to a neighbour — and do it within three days.

3. Recall a time when, like her on the streetcar, you let the moment pass. Confess it, receive forgiveness, and ask God for the next opportunity.

4. If there is a large step you believe God is asking of you, sit down and count the cost on paper, one loss at a time. Then ask whether you can afford to disobey.

5. Tell someone about a failure of courage in your own Christian life. Honesty about failure encourages others more than stories of success.

A PRAYER

Father, teach me to do Your will on earth as the angels do it in heaven — swiftly, promptly, loyally, without shrinking.

Forgive me for the moments I let pass, the tracts I did not give and the words I did not say. Give me another chance.

Where You are calling me to something costly, help me count the cost honestly, and then help me say yes.

Let me know that I cannot afford to disobey You, and that I can afford anything else. Amen.