Estimated reading time: 8 minute(s)
Do you know that Christians actually get tired of being Christians?
I don’t mean the simplicity of being a child of God, I mean all of the stuff we do that makes us feel like Christians.
We get up early to have “quiet times”, faithfully reading the same Bible passages we have read many times before, mining for truths that we may not have seen before. We pray harder. We take on more ministry opportunities. We fill our schedule with as much of the programming at our church as we are able. We even help in the nursery at church!! 🙂
Even deeper than that, the constant battle of trying to beat down our sinful nature. To win a battle that is not winnable. To defeat the tendencies we have toward sin, and to always do what is right and righteous.
It is the constant struggle to prove that we are worthy of the Cross. Of God’s unfathomable love.
And that occasionally grows wearisome.
At times, we can sustain it. For a week. For a month. Even the best part of a year. But most of us can not, and so we settle for a guilt-ridden life of not measuring up to God’s standards. We read the law and know that we SHOULD do that… but we can not. And so we end up with frustration after frustration, repentance after repentance… hoping for the goodness of God’s grace to cover our mistakes up to now, and weary from the thought of the next ones to come… perhaps only minutes from your current confession.
Not all Christians live in fear, but I think most do not get to live in the freedom of God’s love. We fight and struggle to do what is right, and we work so hard to spread the good news of Jesus.
Good news? Have you been reading? Does the above sound like good news? Doing a lot of stuff you don’t really want to do all the time, even though you can’t which just leaves you feeling beaten down and worthless untill you come to another confession time and start it all over again. It is all based on a works-oriented, task-driven way of relating to God.
He is after all, God. He calls the shots. He gives and takes away. Who are we to have any say in what we do or don’t do. Christians through the ages have told us what God likes and what he doesn’t, and I have even read it in His word… He like it when we’re good, and doesn’t like it when we’re bad. A bit simple, but isn’t that basically it?
I don’t think so.
We have been reading He Loves Me by Wayne Jacobsen, and I have been really rethinking who God, my Father, is. To be completely honest, there are not many books that make me completely re-think anything. I am a thinker. That’s what I do. I love to think deeply on things. Any things. But especially anything having to do with God. And so, this book has simply amazed me at its simple look at the love that God has for us.
He has taken us through the parable we call the Prodigal Son. He contends that the story is not really about the son, he is only one of two. The story in fact is about a father who loves unabashedly BOTH of his quite different sons. One wild and selfish, the other self-righteous and indignant. Both are loved completely. Then he obviously uses the cross as a picture of God’s love. Which I have known, but he has made me seriously re-think some of the motivations of God for the cross. It was not just to appease his judgment. It was to defeat sin, and its hold on me. To completely defeat sin and death. It was out of love that God himself allowed his life to be taken (no one could take it from him) so that he could defeat death and sin’s hold on us all. He did all of this before we were even born, and before anyone really asked for it. (Ephesians 1 says his plan was formulated before the creation of the world.)
This unstoppable love of the supreme God for me has fascinated me these past few weeks, and especially as we have read through this book. If you do not own a copy, they are available at Amazon.com… please do go buy one or two. I make no money from that, I just want you to read it.
And it has made me wonder why we do what we do. We have some missionary friends who are tired. They have worked so hard and given their all to help people in a foreign land know the Truth, the Way and the Life. But they are tired. Weary.
I know preachers who endure endless meetings, discussions, politics, maneuvering, power struggles, late-nights, and so much more in the name of serving their King, who are fight to keep going just because they don’t know what else to do. People need to know, right?
I know so many in full-time ministry who are empty and dry and wondering if it is worth going on, and if they are not exhibiting that externally, they are battling that internally. And why? Because they are trying to hard to do something for God, instead of letting Him do something in them.
I think the key is we have forgotten who God is. We have “a form of Godliness, but deny its power.” We work so hard because we are pretty sure we have to keep up our end of the bargain, and in doing so, we often miss the real ministry that God has placed right in front of us.
That might be our family. That might be our neighbors. That might be someone we happen to meet in the parking lot of our local grocer. Whomever that might be, we are so busy building up our kindgoms (our churches) that we often miss The Kingdom happening right around us. There are so many details to manage, so many people to care for, and so few to do the things that need to be done, so we have to recruit more. It is an endless process.
And God did not call us in Scripture to any of it.
What did Jesus say was the greatest commandment? The thing he MOST wants us to do? He quoted Deuteronomy where it says we should “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul and all your strength. The second is just like it, love your neighbor as yourself.” That’s it. We have no commands to create elaborate structures by which we may hopefully communicate the teachings of Jesus to many people in our local area. We are just told to love them. That’s it.
Love is a crazy english word. We say it is a choice. Has nothing to do with emotions. The Love of God (agape, in greek) is a concious choice to do what is in the best interest of the one being loved. Sounds great, eh? NO! That is not what made God hang on a cross. That is not the love of the father in the Incredible Father story… that is heartless and calculated obligatory love. That is not the love God has for us, and not how he wants us to love him or our neighbor.
He wants us to long to be with him. To relish the thought of helping out a friend or neighbor. To bubble with joy at the opportunity to share what God has given you, just because He has.
That’s not always easy, but it’s easier when we are not tired from trying so hard. It’s easier when we get up in the morning and follow God’s plan for us, instead of our own agenda.
I probably have lost a lot of you by now. I am sorry for that. I don’t mean to. Nor do I mean to in any way condemn anyone who is reading this for not doing anything I have mentioned the “right” way.
I do think we are missing out on the fullness of life in Jesus (he said he came that we might have life to the full – John 10:10) and mostly that is because we are trying so hard to attain it. Instead of resting in the fact that He has already given it to us, we just need to live it with Him.
I intend to re-read the whole Bible over the next while, reading it with eyes open to God’s incredible love for me. The love that says I am his child, not just a subject in his Kingdom. The love that says I am his bride, and he is the groom. The love that says he sings over me. I will definitely be posting thoughts along the way as I do.
I hope you know his love for you. Rom 8:31 says if God is for us, who (or what) can be against us. That question is posed because the first part is so unmistakeably true. God IS for us.
Max Lucado played with the phrase once. Say it with the inflection on all the different words. They are all true. And they all hold a different and amazing meaning.
GOD is for us. The almighty. Creator of heaven and earth. HE is for us.
God IS for us. Today. Not once, a long time ago. Not just when he died on the cross. Not just when we were good. He IS for us… now.
God is FOR us. He loves us. He is on our side. He is cheering us on, picking us up, constantly warmed by the thought of YOU.
God is for US. You and me. Not the special people. Not the “saints”. Not the ones who love him the best. He is for US. All the time. Forever.
That is amazing.
I pray, as Paul did, that “out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge — that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” Eph 3:16-19
Know, as I am learning, that you are so incredibly loved. As you are. Forever.
That is our purpose for being. To share in that love. THAT… is our mission.