“For I do not do the good I want, but the evil that I do not want is what I keep on doing .” – Romans 7:19
These words, written by Paul, perfectly describe my life these past few weeks. The things I want to do, I don’t do and the things I don’t really want to do, I end up doing. I want to spend time with God. I want to be a devoted student. I want to be a better time manager. I want to memorize scripture. I want to exercise more and the list goes on. And yet, I squander my free time doing useless things. I am slacking off as a student and have not managed my time well at all. I haven’t been memorized scripture. I have not been seeking to know God on a deeper level. And exercise, lol….
The things I want to do I don’t do and what I don’t want to do, I end up doing. One selfish decision led to another and then to another etc… that has brought me to this place where I feel so broken and distant from God. I have fallen so very short and I hate it. And in the midst of my struggles, I have started to believe lies about God deceptively crafted by the enemy. I have started to believe that God loves me less because I have failed Him. I let him slip so far down my list of priorities that He has done the same to me. I can’t be close to him until I get my act together and start being a “better” Christian. Perhaps the biggest lie of all is that one that summarizes what these other lies have in common, that God’s love for me is based on the things I do or do not do. This, my friends, is such a flawed view of the God that we serve and yet one I think far too many of us buy into each day.
How do I know that these things are lies from the enemy? The Holy Spirit has gently reminded me of who God is and what He has done through various scriptures these past few days. Inarguably, the greatest demonstration of God’s love for us can be seen in the salvation given to us through Jesus’s sacrifice. Salvation is not based on anything that we do and purely based on what Jesus has done. Romans 5:8 says that God demonstrates His love for us in this way: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. What this means is that while we were imperfect, while we were disobedient, while we were living for the world, while we were distant from God, Christ died for us. And if Christ died for us when we were still sinners, there is no way that He died for us because we somehow earned a personal relationship with Him. It’s through what He did that we are offered the gift of eternal life, a chance to walk with the Father daily and know him personally.
Ephesians 2 says that we were dead in our transgressions and sins but God in his mercy, made us alive in Christ. It is by grace that we have been saved. Grace alone saves us. Grace is what brings us from death to life. This again shows us that it’s not anything that we do that earns us salvation. Not being a “good person.” Not going to church every Sunday. Not memorizing the entire Bible. Not anything that we can do. Grace and grace alone saves us. And if we accept the salvation and love extended to us through grace, then Romans 8:38-39 tells us that there is nothing that can separate us from the love of Christ Jesus. Once we truly have trusted Jesus with our lives and have committed to follow him, there is absolutely nothing we can do to lose His love.
Christianity is not a checklist of things we are supposed to do in order to gain the love of God each day and yet I know I tend to treat is as such. I believe that I cannot ever lose the love of God but I, like so many, still have bought into this lie that God’s faithfulness to me is dependent on my faithfulness to Him. That if I don’t do certain things then I am somehow loved less. But the problem with this thinking is that it bases God’s love for me on my very imperfect character and not his perfect character. 2 Timothy 2:13 reminds us of this by saying that when we are faithless, he remains faithful for he cannot deny himself. It’s not in his character to be faithless to us when we are faithless to Him. He is constant in spite of what we do or do not do.
Therefore, the Holy Spirit has revealed this to me. If by obeying God, I cannot make Him love me more, then wants the point of obeying him? I obey Him because my obedience to God is an overflow of the grace I have been shown. I don’t spend time with God to make him love me. I spend time with God because He loves me. I don’t read my Bible and pray as a way to make Him love me more but rather I do these things so I can love Him more. I don’t have to clean my self up to spend time with Him. He takes me just as I am, (mess and all) and loves me in spite of my shortcomings.
Hallelujah, what a Savior.
It is my hope and prayer that these truths that the LORD has reminded me will speak to you and encourage you. Yes, we all fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). We all mess up and make mistakes. We are not perfect and therefore cannot earn the love of God. But, the Bible promises us that where sin abounds, grace abounds much more (Romans 5:20). God’s love for us is so much more powerful than anything we have done, are currently doing, or can ever do. It is my prayer that we can all find peace these and submit all of who we are right now to Him, for He who promised to love us as we are is faithful.
