Trying to Earn God’s Presence

Six months ago we introduced you to Kristen Larson who writes at Abide.Trust.Believe. I stopped in for a visit again this week, and was touched by how she writes at a deeply personal level, as you’ll see in the piece below. Click the header which follows to read at her site.

Loved

I was raised in a Christian home. My upbringing included Sunday School on Sunday mornings, Youth Group on Wednesday nights, and Small Group on Fridays. From an early age, God quickly became the most important person in my life.

I can remember the first time I raised my hands in worship during Sunday School. I would spend hours in prayer at church camp in the summer. My journals are filled with prayers and questions – looking to God for the answers.

Growing into adulthood, the godly women in my life encouraged me to spend intentional time alone with God, where you read your bible and pray. And I have done my best to make this a priority for the last 10 years. They’ve never been the perfect “hour every morning with a cup of coffee”, and they’ve never been perfectly consistent, but spending time in the Word and in prayer has continued to grow in importance the older I get.

I have had many seasons in life where I’ve felt alive in Christ. I’ve felt his love wash over me and my times with him have been fruitful and life giving. But this year, my times in solitude with the Lord started to get frustrating.  I was leaving each time upset and irritated. I couldn’t feel God. I couldn’t hear him. The logical solution was that I was doing something wrong. So, I would try getting up before work to start my day off right. I kept falling asleep, so I’d plan out exactly what I would read. When that didn’t work, I’d try spontaneity – just opening up anywhere in the bible and reading. I gave devotional reading a shot. I tried focusing on prayer alone. I gave reading a book by a Christian author. Nothing worked.

It wasn’t until just recently that I was able to finally voice the lie that had been planted in my heart. Luke and I were driving home from a dear friends funeral, and I don’t remember exactly how it came up or how the conversation wound its way there, but I remember telling Luke with tears in my eyes… I don’t think God loves me.

Just voicing this to Luke and identifying it caused blinders to off my eyes. I can see it now. I was trying to earn his love. I realized on that car ride home that I had been trying to earn his presence by getting up early each morning. I was trying to be good enough for him to speak to me by doing all the right things. I was trying to come up with ways to manipulate him into speaking to me.

But as I remembered the overarching story of the Bible, the truth became so clear: I cannot, under any circumstances, earn his love. 

Romans 5:6-11 says,

When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners. Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. And since we have been made right in God’s sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God’s condemnation. For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his Son. So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God.

God chased after us, even while we rejected him. God extended his love to us, even when we failed, yet again. God sealed the deal, even while we sat covered in our sin – paralyzed by our inability to measure up.

Psalm 23:6 says,

Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me all the days of my life, and I will live in the house of the Lord forever.

He pursues us.

I hope you can begin to walk in this freedom today, too. I encourage you to spend time with the Lord, knowing, believing, and declaring that he loves you.  Let this truth wash over you:

You are loved. You are his.

Lying to Ourselves

In the process of verifying one of the E. Stanley Jones quotes that appeared here yesterday, I came across a Tumblr blog by sabrinacate, but I couldn’t actually locate the proper link for attribution. (If anyone can locate this exact article, I’ll add the link.)  This post was too good not to include here…

Lies We Tell Ourselves About God

Why lie to ourselves.

—God does not know or see what I’m doing:

• Psalm 73:11 “They say, ‘How does God know? And is there knowledge with the Most High?’”
• God always knows. Why do we tell ourselves He doesn’t. Even if we may not tell ourselves that, we act like we believe that sometimes.

—God sees things the way I do:

• I Samuel 16:7 “But the LORD said to Samuel, ‘Do not look at his appearance or at the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.’”
• Just because we like something or do something does not mean that God approves of it.

—God is appeased by my giving

• I Samuel 15 “Saul was commanded by God to destroy the Amalekites and to leave nothing left. Saul disobeyed God. He spared Agag and the best of the sheep, oxen, fatlings, lambs, and all that was good.”
• It’s not ok to not do things the way God says. We need to live in a way that honors Him during the week, not just when we are at church.
• He doesn’t need you singing praises to Him, if you wont live by Him!

—God doesn’t believe in me

• Job 4:18 “He puts not trust even in His servants’ And against His angels He charges error”
• God believed in Job’s faith. He can certainly believe in ours as well. God does everything with us in mind. He believes we can choose holiness.
• Having a place prepared in Heaven, already for us, shows how much God believes in us. He wants us and believes that we can be righteous.

Our Common Lies

—God only helps those who help themselves

• 8 out of 10 people believe this is found in the Bible.
• We value work, as humans, and we assume that God thinks like us, which He doesn’t.
• If this statement were so, we would not be Christians. It says we are helpless and hopeless in the Bible.
• Paul said there is not one who is righteous.
• God makes up the whole gap with Jesus’ sacrifice.
• Everyday our attitude should be “Thank you, Lord, for your gift.”
• Luke 18 “The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector”
• God helps those who know they need help, like the tax collector in the parable.

—God’s love much be earned

• This idea is not from God.
• Galatians 3
• There’s nothing you can do to get God to love you more or less. It also never says in the Bible why God chose to love the Israelites or the apostles or us. So why would we think there had to be something they did to deserve it?

—God understands that’s just the way I am. After all, He made me this way.

• “Oh, I know I shouldn’t do that, but …”
• God did not make you to sin!!
• God understands that’s just they way I am, but that’s why He sent His son Jesus! SO THAT WE CAN CHANGE!
• This is just our way of making excuses and justifying the things we do.

We create distortions of reality when we lie to ourselves.

• If we tell ourself that someone hates us, we’ll relate that way to them.
• If we do this with God, that always brings pain and suffering.

“When we say we begin with God, we begin with our idea of God, and our idea of God is not God. Instead, we ought to begin with God’s idea of God, and God’s idea of God is Christ” -E. Stanley Jones