Obedience

None of these thoughts are fully formed yet so forgive the jumble that may come out.
Obedience or the idea of following God..why is it so hard? There are hundreds of areas in scripture that talk about obedience. Why is it so hard for us to listen to his instructions for our life and trust him? I find myself so bull-headedly wanting to follow my own feelings or my own idea for my life. My lack of obedience is in a lot of ways a lack of trust. Many times I know things that I ought to do, which I hate that word, but in this sense I mean ought do because ultimately they are what God knows is best for me, yet I stubbornly refuse to do them. This is usually because I don't want the harder path, or what I think is the harder path, or I don't want to deal with the ramifications of what that action is. But ultimately I am trusting myself more.
I think there will always be this tension between knowing what I am called to and watching myself fail over and over as a result of being fallen. When I realize this tension it is hard to know what to do with it because we hear all the time that life is about me and what I feel. Don't get me wrong, feelings have their place and in many instances I know God works through our feelings. But there are other times I think our feelings are purely selfish and a part of being fallen and I chose to listen to my feelings out of my desire to remain comfortable rather than step out into something I am afraid of.
So how do all these fit together? I think our pastor Dave said it well on Sunday...that we can grow to embrace something by acting on it; the understanding of why grows as we act instead of waiting to feel like it before we act. In these times, feelings will follow as feelings shouldn't be the final authority in my life. I obey not because I must in order to be loved, I obey because I am so deeply loved and known that I trust what I am being called to follow. In these times I remember humbly my unwillingness and pray that God would change my heart and step out in trust into where he is leading. I admit that I need this attitude even in the simple act of sitting down to spend time with him.