Doing hard things for Jesus

There are few things in this world we desire more than the acceptance of others. Nearly everything we do in life is geared towards getting on someones "good" side. It could be something as simple as mowing the lawn, without being told to do so, so as to receive the acceptance of our father. Or maybe it is working overtime in order to finish a project so as to please our boss. There are countless examples in life that can serve to make the point. Therefore, it is not a surprise when we bring that same attitude into our relationship with Jesus Christ. Do the following statements made by Christians sound familiar to you?

"We're all trying to make ourselves right for God."

"The purpose of [participating in a religious tradition] is to become more aware of God and one's relationships with others through self-discipline and avoiding temptation."

"[Participating in this religious tradition is about] doing hard things for Jesus and others."

"When are your heart and mind more right than when you're hitting your knees in desperation and need?"

On the surface these all sound great. And I would never discourage anybody from trying to better themselves, help others or pray for God's direction. However, the reasoning behind all of these efforts is that each person talking acts as though doing these things will result in them receiving acceptance or accolades from God. In some ways there is a twinge of fear that ties each one of these statements together as if they don't already have His acceptance and must earn it. The problem I see in all of this is a misunderstanding or a total lack of knowledge of who these people are in Christ. The Bible says that "Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God (1 Peter 3:18)." The Christian life is not about what we are doing for God, but all about what He, in Christ, has done for us. No amount of good works, no doubt those works we decide are good, will bring us any closer to God than we are already. In God's eyes, if we have accepted Jesus Christ by faith we are righteous in His sight. If this is true, then one must ask themselves how are your good works going to make you righteous in His site? They will not.

When one decides that self-discipline and avoiding temptation are admirable goals to try and accomplish they are guilty of putting themselves under the law. How else are you going to determine how best to discipline yourself and avoid temptation if not through subjecting yourself to a set of rules geared towards modifying your behavior? "Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence (Colossians 2:23)." Is not religion a system designed to show you what do to and what not do in order to obtain or sustain your right standing before God? Again, self-discipline and avoiding temptation, in and of themselves, are not bad things. What I am trying to get at is what determines your motivation in all this. In most cases a person is trying to get from God through their behavior what He has already given to them through faith in Jesus Christ.

There is nothing more difficult than trying to do hard things for Jesus. In fact, most religious tradition is centered around getting a person to stop sinning in one form or another. That is not hard to do. It is impossible to do. The Christian life is not about learning to try and stop sinning through subjecting oneself to tradition after tradition. The hard reality is that you will not stop sinning until you die. If you want to overcome a besetting sin in your life you have to start learning to trust God. The only way in which to do that is by realizing that "God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them (2 Corinthians 5:19)." This is not encouragement to sin, but a reminder to all of us in Christ that our sins no longer separate us from God. Trying to do the impossible is not an act of faith. Faith says thank you to God for taking our sins away in Christ so that we can now approach Him in order to receive His love. A Christian lives by faith not works. Any sins we overcome, any good deeds we perform, any bad habits we break and any good habits we form are a byproduct of allowing God, through the Holy Spirit, to live the life only He can live through us.

There is nothing wrong with asking God, in prayer, to remove the suffering in our lives. However, we should know that as long as we live in this world we will suffer. I would encourage each believer to ask God to continue to reveal to you what it is you already have in Him. The byproduct of that will be an ability to live above your circumstances because you realize that nothing we face in this life separates us from Him. Your heart is right with God when you realize that your are right with Him. Many of the spiritual struggles we face start from a misconception about God and who we are as His children. He never promised to remove barriers in our life. What He promised was that He would be their with us in the midst of dealing with those barriers. The way in which He does this is by reminding us that we are holy, blameless, forgiven, righteous and acceptable to Him because of our faith in Christ. If you are engaging in behavior geared towards making yourself acceptable to God you will never be at rest because you will never succeed. The hardest thing that you may ever do for Jesus is believing that "he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy (Titus 3:5)."