The constant desire to prove something to Christ can bring such a death grip upon the satisfaction that God desires for us to have with being Sons and Daughters of the King. It's hard growing up being told that you can be whatever you want to be, it's just left up to you. Your life is basically in your hands. What you do with it is your choice and your fault. Whatever the outcome was because your lack of effort or you were just screwed. The things we tell our young ones can shape the views for eternity if we are not careful. Oh thank you for a sovereign God. How he can take the mistakes of our parents and turn them into good. So this whole thing about being part of a savior who justifies me and finds no sin on my behalf because of the gift that He choose to give me by dieing on the cross. So what does that mean? It truly sounds to good to be true, even for a kid who grew up in the church and sat in the pew every sunday and heard the stories of this creator who came to save the lost. The Lord chose to reveal himself to me at a very young age. I don' t remember much about it but I know something struck me that day at Vacations bible School. It was a real as the day, but what I learned afterwards has been the hardest thing for me to grasp. I was told that you can do anything you set your mind to. If you want to make it, then put in the work, keep working when everyone else is playing and enjoying and make yourself a slave to proving your good enough to make it. One thing this created in me was sense of pride. I was working while everyone else was playing. I was dedicated and desereved my success while everyone else didn't because they didn't work hard enough. I wasn't going to let anyone else out work me. I took Colosions 3:23 to heart. Whatever you are doing put your whole heart into it as if you were doing it for the Lord and not for man. It kind of okayed what I was doing. I was able to put a stamp of proof on my efforts and feel good about them. It aloud me to sin basically. After all that whole mess ended, then I was left with this incredible sense of pride and anger. No one worked as hard as me, but I realized it didn't matter. I put in the most work and was still treatly unjustly, and unfairly. I didn't desereve that to happen. I worked. I was dedicated, I was only thinking about myself. Not realizing this at the time, but it created such a sense of selfishness and self consciencenesss. All my days were focused on my path, my greatness, and my worthiness. Yes, I still considered myself a chrsitian at this time. Althought my theology was completely wrong and really lacking. What was is that took me so far away from what truly mattered. Oh how enticing the self is, the promotion, the pursuit of excellence is to a human. The worst part is yet to come. I took all this knowledge and started to put my works against the back drop of the Jesus' death on the cross. Oh yeah, I show you I'm worth it. I'll show you I deserve to be saved. I'll do my part to make. Sound like a modern day Pharisee to anyone? Oh, but it looked good on the outside. Nevermind the Holy Spirit. I'll do it my self through my own power. The crazy thing is that I knew that. I knew it was by my own power. I kept falling into this rut of I've got to be doing something. So an extreme type of personalitiy came about, cupled with pride and self-arogance and self-conscience. What an ugly sense of selfishness that is hidden to the outside world, yet is permeated with all your actions, thoughts, and decisions. I started to make decisios based on my duty to Christ. He died for me, I was realizing he called me to a different life, a selfless life, a life that wasn't about this world, a life that was about him. Okay. I have the knowledge. I'll do it. I 'll sell my car, I'll live on a budget, I'll read books and listen to sermons. But for what reason? To look good, to show God that I'm doing my part, that I'm worthy of his salvation. Hello, am I looking in the mirror at all. Do I know my sin at all. What sort of example is that. I always used to marvel at the fact that Christ was loved by the sinners yet hated by those that knew the laws. How in the world does that happen? Because my life looks nothing like that. I've become so critical of people and hard on others that it looks like I'm the judge. Looks like I'm the one in charge and perfect. Another part of my destructed view of Christ. Because I was always so entharalled with being the best, I wanted to be the best for God. I wanted to run through that brick wall for Christ. I tried to go to the extreme with everything about him, really doing, doing, doing. Sound like Martha and Mary to anyone. The standards I hold are so high for others. I wanted to go to the extremes for Christ. I'll not watch TV. I'll quit my job. I'll sell everything I own and go do missions somewhere where there is poverty. But then what? I know that wouldn't be enough, that wouldn't be near as far as God would take me, I mean He is God. He would want me to go even further. And all in the back of my head having great pride in myself, looking at my friends and family saying how pitiful they are that they don't get it like I had something to do with it. God must be calling me to something bigger. How scary to think that I would only have a small part in the story. My part has to be bigger than that. Come on God, that's it. You mean you might just want me to be a school teacher and live in McKinney Texas all my life, with the commoners. Nah. there has to be more, your bigger than that. I can't be compeltly unncessasary to God can I. He needs me right, for a big part. sounds kind of like i'm deserving of this stuff or at least thhat is what I think I was trying to do. What guilt this brings about when you think this way. You are never satisfied, never resting, my burden is light and my yoke is easy, yeah right. Come on. This is hard, this sucks. Live through the holy spirit. Rely on Chirst, what in the world does that mean? How do you do that? I've got to be doing something, right? I do the changing, right? Who in the world would ever want to follow a God like mine with this kind of view. Sounds like some of the other religions I know. How could that be, that is almost completely opposite of what Chirst came to do. No rest at all, never enough time in the day to do, do, do. My life doesn't look like it's saved, like the battle has been won. I'll tell you what this leads to. A life that eventually breaks down. A life that eventually falls into tiredness, sickness, and death. Slave to the law, slave to my worth in my own self. What a slap in the face to God. Oh forgive me father. Am I doing, choosing, speaking out of duty or out of love. What is my motive, for It won't be blessed by God if its wrong. More books, more sermons, more verses, your never doing enough. God is going to show you who you really are. If you want to be used he is going to break you until you realize what you really are. That you aren't capable. That you have to take a back seat to his journey. That even your good deeds are like fitlthy rags to him. Tired yet!
"The worst tragedy would be to turn the Sermon on the Mount into another form of legalism; it should rather put an end to all legalism. Legalism like the Pharisees' will always fail, not because it is too strict but because it is not strict enough. Thunderously, inarguably, the Sermon on the Mount proves that before God we all stand on level ground: murderers and temper-throwers, adulterers and lusters, theieves and coveters. We are all desperate, and that is the fact the only state appropriate to a human being who wants to know God. Having fallen from the absolute Ideal, we have nowwhere to land but in the safety net of absolute grace."--Philip Yancy, The Jesus I Never Knew
JTH
