All we do is work. Work opens doors and wins favor. But sometimes no matter how hard we work, it isn’t enough. This is the reality of our lives, especially in environments that are highly competitive and require a high work-ethic that keeps our “nose to the grinding stone” just about all the time. This kind of lifestyle eventually makes us weary, burned out, and greatly unfulfilled.
The trouble is that many people bring this worldview and daily practice into their relationship with God:
- I haven’t worked enough for God to earn His favor.
- I haven’t done enough for God to please Him.
- I haven’t labored and done enough penance to receive His forgiveness.
This is not relationship! It is slavery! And it leads to frustration because work doesn’t earn God’s favor, pleasure, or forgiveness!
There is too much DOING and not enough BECOMING in Christ!
Doing makes you weary and tired!
Becoming gives you rest.
Doing relies on the abilities of your flesh and leaves cracks in your foundation!
Becoming builds you on the Rock of Christ, for Christ is doing the building.
Doing leaves you malnourished!
Becoming gives you strength.
Doing brings short-term results and needs events to stimulate your faith!
Becoming produces fruit the remains.
Psalm 46:10 “Be still and know that I am God…”
This can be better translated, “Cease striving and know that I am God!”
This implies to me that I cannot know Him if I am striving, because striving draws me away from Christ and into myself. It is a very prideful thing to do, because we actually practice that our salvation and relationship with God is dependent upon our works!
But surrendering and laying all that we are at the foot of the Cross brings us into healthy, intimate love-relationship with Jehovah God and Jesus Christ His Son!
God is not looking for our works! He is looking for our hearts!
God does not want us to die separated from Him! He DESIRES that we are in relationship with Him! Listen to God’s cry in Ezekiel 18:30-32 –
“… Repent, and turn from your sins. Don’t let them destroy you! 31Put all your rebellion behind you, and find yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. For why should you die …? 32I don’t want you to die, says the Sovereign LORD. Turn back! Turn back and live!”
Do you know how “live” can be translated in this text? Be revived, nourished, repaired, restored, made whole! Who doesn’t need that?
You can hear the yearning of God in this passage for our salvation, healing and restoration. You can hear the hurt of His heart and He longs for relationship with you. There is no place in the entire Old Testament that God’s heart of yearning for a love-relationship with us is so dramatically stated from His own mouth ….. from His own heart! That’s what the love of God sounds like!
And do you know what it sounds like in the New Testament? It sounds like a mallet hammering spikes into the feet and hands of God’s Son! It sounds like a whip lashing on His back and the thunder of the words, “It is finished!”
What was finished? God’s ultimate expression of LOVE for YOU!
Let me summarize the entire Word of God for you in one sentence:
God loves you and He desires an intimate relationship with you that will rock your world, change your soul, fulfill every dream and desire and bring you to the edge of faith every single day in a new revelation of the reality of who He is and who He wants to be in your life!
Are you ready to dive into that kind of love-relationship with God?
Ephesians 3:14-20 –
“When I think of all this, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth. I pray that from His glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through His Spirit. Then Christ will make His home in your hearts as you trust in Him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep His love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God. Now all glory to God, who is able, through His mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.”