Following Orders

To celebrate the start of the school holidays, I went with one of my sons and his family on a special trip to London. My son has two little boys, aged seven and five, and a baby of ten months. We travelled by train, which was a thrill for them all, and then we went to visit HMS Belfast, which is a World War II cruiser, now moored in the Thames as a floating museum.

As we looked at the gun turrets, the bridge, the engine and boiler rooms, the living quarters, the kitchens, the laundry, the radio room and the repair shops, I thought of all the parallels that exist between the crew on a working battleship and those working in an Ellel centre. Each of the crew needs to be focused on their particular function and to be working in harmony with each other and the other departments.

I thought of what Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 12 about the parts of the body needing each other, and the way ‘God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be?’ (1 Corinthians 12:18-19). Every person has a value and a calling to fulfil their particular role, and each role is important to the whole work.

But the thing that impacted me most was when we visited the steering room, which was in the bowels of the ship about three levels down from the main deck. The officer who was there steering the ship would have had no view of the outside, so he would not have been able to see where the ship was or where it was headed. He would receive an order via the intercom from the captain on the bridge and would turn the wheel to steer the vessel accordingly. There was no opportunity to question the order or to check it against his own vision, he would simply obey without delay. He had to repeat back to the captain through the intercom the instruction he had received, and then comply with it.

When God gives us a command, He wants us to obey in the same way, without questioning and without grumbling. There are many examples in the Bible of men who obeyed like this. Noah built the ark to the exact specifications given by God (Genesis 6), which enabled his family and representatives of all living creatures to be saved from the flood. Joshua followed precise instructions to march round Jericho once a day for six days. On the seventh day they were to march round seven times with the priests blowing their trumpets and the people were to shout (Joshua 6). This brought the walls of that great fortified city tumbling down. David, when facing the Philistines, was given different instructions in two situations which appeared similar (2 Samuel 5:17-25). He obeyed and his enemies were defeated on both occasions.

What about us? If God is speaking to us, we need to follow orders in the same way as a sailor on board a battleship would, without doubting or being tempted to think that we know better. The Lord says: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways” (Isaiah 55:8). His ways are perfect, and He knows what is best for us. We can trust Him completely in all situations, especially when we cannot see the way ahead.