Hello Everyone,
Have you ever said this statement or made this commitment, “I’m going to start living for God!” If you are like me, growing up you may have heard a lot of people encouraging you to “Live for God”. My interpretation of that was that I needed to find out what the Bible said about what God expected of a Christian and I needed to fulfill those expectations and then I would be a good christian and God would be pleased with me. So I worked really, really hard at finding out those expectations and attempting to live up to them. Now, don’t misunderstand…I really loved God and wanted to please Him. So I worked really hard at this and was completly sincere in everything I did. I loved going to church and loved my friends that I hung out with. I believe we all had a sincere love for God and wanted to please God.
I don’t think those that taught us to “Live for God” realized what they were saying nor did they mean to bring confusion into our lives. Their teaching at that time accomplished God’s purposes in me and kept me out of a lot of trouble that could have reeked havoc in my life. The trouble that I found myself in years later was that I felt like I never could measure up to God’s standards and that it was never enough. I couldn’t understand after I had worked so hard for so long that the idea of “success” that I was looking for in my relationship with God and ministry seemed so illusive.
At one point I felt successful-like everything was going well and then I arrived at a place and it was like the bottom feel out. No matter how hard I worked I just couldn’t be successful. I even resorted to praying harder and more often, I spent more time studing the Bible and begging God to please intervene. I memorized more scripture, got an accountability partner and witnessed more. At one point, I remember thinking that because I wasn’t tithing more God was punishing me. Yet, the intervention that I prayed for never seemed to happen. I felt abandoned and left by God. I would pray and felt as if my prayers bounced off the ceiling and came right back and hit me in the head. I did not know that all the while, God was there, protecting me but allowing me to go through a process called brokenness. This process enabled me to see that all of my efforts would never be good enough and that Christ had already done all the work on the cross. He did love me and He was pleased with me. I could quit my striving and working hard to please Him.
Jesus did this exact same thing when He began his earthly ministry. The religious establishment would teach their rules and regulations and Jesus would come along and raise the bar on them. One example was when they taught about adultery and Jesus came along and said if you even looked at a women with lust in your heart then you had committed adultery with her. Another was if anyone wants to sue you and take your tunic (undershirt) then give him your coat also; or if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. Jesus caps off some of this teaching by saying, “You, therefore, must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Now, there’s a standard to attempt to live up to! Wow….that makes me tired just thinking about it. What was Jesus meaning here? I have heard many debate and try to explain away what all this means. I myself did that many times. FYI….a legalist will always have an explanation for these verses….excuses really, because they can’t live up to that standard and that is exactly what I think Jesus was up to here. He wanted all of us across time to see and realize that we could never live up to this standard so we would get to the end of ourselves and quit trying. At this point we then look to Him and see the sufficiency of the cross and realize that in Christ all of our needs are met and we can receive the beautiful gift of His love and acceptance of us. What a precious relationhip we can then experience with Father! I call it “Living Loved”. I am full, complete, satisfied, valued and worth everything to my Father in heaven who made the ultimate sacrifice for me. He literally put my needs before Himself and made it possible for me to be crucified with Him and receive His life inside of me. I am now a new creation in Him. I don’t have to work hard or earn anything. It is all a free gift that I can rest in and experience on a daily bases.
Do I serve the Lord now, you may ask? Yes! But with a whole new perspective. I don’t live FOR God anymore…I live FROM God now. Meaning, I allow Christ, who is my very life to express Himself in and through me. I live out of Christ strength not my own. As Paul said in Gal. 2:20,“I am curcified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. This life that I live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” The old Dana is now dead and now Christ is living through me.
Think about these verses from the Message out of Galatians 3, “Let me put this question to you: How did your new life begin? Was it by working your heads off to please God? Or was it by responding to God’s Message to you? Are you going to continue this craziness? For only crazy people would think they could complete by their own efforts what was begun by God. If you weren’t smart enough or strong enough to begin it, how do you suppose you could perfect it? Did you go through this whole painful learning process for nothing? It is not yet a total loss, but it certaintly will be if you keep this up! Answer this question: Does the God who lavishly provides you with his own presence, His Holy Spirit, working things in your lives you could never do for yourselves, does He do these things because of your strenuous moral striving or because you trust Him to do them in you? Don’t these things happen among you just as they happened with Abraham? He believed God, and that act of belief was turned into a life that was right with God.
Later in the chapter Paul says, “And that means that anyone who tries to live by his own effort, independent of God, is doomed to failure.”
And later he says, “The obvious impossibility of carrying out such a moral program should make it plain that no one can sustain a relationship with God that way. The person who lives in right relationship with God does it by embracing what God arranges for him. Doing things for God is the opposite of entering into what God does for you.”
Well, I guess that about sums up this one! Rest….and live FROM Him and not FOR Him!
Dana