Do you ever find yourself doing things that your heart isn’t really in, but you do them anyway because it’s expected of you? I slip into that routine from time to time. That was a common MO when I was the CEO of a religious institution. But recently I’ve become aware that I still at times get caught up in the same thing in response to pressure from others.

I do a lot of things for my wife that I don’t particularly enjoy doing that she neither asks or expects me to do just because I love her. And love makes a generally unwelcome job a privilege. But operating from a motive of obligation only is a pain.

But it’s not only in relationship to others that we can act from a sense of duty. It’s easy to react to circumstances or needs and make decisions based on our own understanding and the perceived urgency of the situation.

Oswald Chambers wrote: If we do a thing from a sense of duty, we are putting up a standard in competition with Jesus Christ. We become a “superior person,” and say – “Now in this matter I must do this and that.” We have put our sense of duty on the throne instead of the resurrection life of Jesus. We are not told to walk in the light of conscience, or of a sense of duty, but to walk in the light as God is in the light.

I’ve often depended on the God given gifts of logical deduction and common sense to choose a certain course in a matter when his way was only discernable by the light he would have shed if only I had depended on him. The outcome, of course, was not life.

Today I have the choice to strive with tough issues that seem unsolvable or to yield myself and the matters at hand to the Light of life where I can rest.

David Fredrickson