2014.
The New Year is upon us!
Right now millions of people around the world are busy making their
lists, setting their goals, and throwing out all their junk food. Resolutions can be good things, motivations
to be healthier or live fuller lives, they motivate us to flourish in our short
time here on this earth. It’s great to
have goals, but it’s important that we don’t confuse our “needs improvement”
list with the voice of God.
Thousands of Christians are, at this very moment, sketching
out their New Year’s to do lists. These
lists are filled with things like “Read the entire Bible this year” and “Witness
to my coworkers.” Don’t get me wrong,
reading the Bible is great! Everyone should definitely check out Judges, there
are some pretty cool stories in there!
But if your list consists of only the behavior modification, “reading
the Bible,” then I guarantee you will fail.
That’s the problem with today’s brand of Christianity; it
focuses too much on behavior. That
probably has something to do with the culture of our world today, a culture
that breeds list makers and duty focused go-getters. We’ve traded being a Christ follower for
being a moral member of society, and those are two very different things.
Morality calls us to be good, act upright, to sit still, and
behave. Jesus did not sit still and
behave.
See, Christ came to offer us freedom as we put Him in
chains. He came to lavish love as we
shouted hate. He came to offer us righteousness
while we lived in depravity. He pursued
the ones who ran and defied death. He
embraced the infectious and called the uneducated to tell His story. He brought wine to the party and healed on
the day of rest. He befriended the prostitute
and turned away the religious. He did so
we don’t have to. He sacrificed so we
could stop sacrificing. He did it all so
we can stop trying so hard.
God doesn’t want you to read your Bible because it’s on your
resolutions list. In fact, He doesn’t even
want you to read your Bible because you think it will bring you closer to
him. He wants you to read your Bible because
you know how loved you are, how much He treasures you, how righteous He has
made you, and knowing that makes it impossible for you to not want to read more
about Him.
God doesn’t want you to witness to your coworkers because He
needs more people on His team. He doesn’t
want you to do it because you think it’s stocking up some extra eternal brownie
points or that it will get you in a mansion closer to His. He wants you to be so overwhelmed with the
grace He has poured on you that you can’t help but tell everyone you know how
freaking awesome it is!
God has no interest in what you can do for Him.
His interest is that you know what He has already done for
you.
It’s time we stopped.
Stop. Stop it all.
Stop worrying.
Stop agonizing over our failure to do enough.
Stop pursuing perfection.
Stop reading your Bible, praying, witnessing, giving 10%, and
going to church 3 times a week.
Stop everything that you do because you “have to.”
You no longer have to wonder if you’re loving Him enough
because He loves you enough.
It’s not about if you do enough because He has done it all.
You don’t have to question if you are righteous enough
because His righteousness is yours.
We are not defined by what we do for Him, how well we achieve
within our religion or how well we behave according to society’s rules. Our identity lies in what has been done for
us, giving us freedom from a performance driven religion, calling us to something
far greater than just a behavior modification.
We serve a God who is so big that He chose to become the
smallest of us, His broken creation, in our most vulnerable of forms, a baby. A God who forsook everything; His kingdom,
His comfort, and His power, to come to our world of death and pain and
pointless suffering and die a criminal’s death so that we could have the
birthright of His Son. So that we could
enjoy everything He gave up to walk, with the dusty feet of a carpenter, among
us.
How could we have the audacity to think that anything we
could ever do could even begin to compare to that?
How can we forsake such a beautiful gift of love for a sorely
unmatched replacement of religion?
This year, let your resolution be to give up your resolutions. Let your days be filled by the remembrance of
how loved you are, how perfect he has made you, and how impossible it is to
lose that. This year choose to stop
doing and just be.
Resolve to be unresolved, uncertain of where you’re headed
but confident in who you are. Enjoy the
fantastic, unpredictably delightful ride that pursuing Him takes you on.
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