Here is the revelation that is shaping my life today – how deeply acceptance is measured by performance, and how this is not the story of heaven.
Philippians 3:9 NLT
[9] I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law; rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ. For God’s way of making us right with himself depends on faith.
Observation
Here is where freedom starts. Free from the demands of being good to be made right. This seems to me to be the biggest weight that weighs people down from enjoying the freedom God desires. The inability to see that their performance has no say, no consequence, no influence, upon their right relationship with God. The world, and those in the world, accept me based on my performance, so I import the ways of the world and build my theological house with the same material. Then my experience of God is shaped by the house I place in him, and God turns his back on me, just like the world does when I perform badly. There need to be some serious renovations made.
Obedience gets me no more right, actually, it’s not part of the equation. Don’t do the maths. Stop counting your good works and balancing the ledger against your bad. You will always end up in the disqualified column. Tear up the ledger, and breathe in the fresh air of right already. Nothing to prove, nothing to add, nothing to maintain, no debt to pay, no bar to jump, no performance to measure up to, just complete and utter freedom of unearned and undeserved righteousness. God passionately wants to walk intimately with you so he makes you right for intimacy without you. He makes you right. And it’s my choice to faith build my house based on his declaration, in his made me right, that I experience and live in this beauty and freedom.
This is the foundation of life with God. If you don’t get this right, you will struggle to enjoy his intimacy. There will always be the lingering, sometimes screaming accusation, of “too bad, so sad, not welcome.” And then comes the treadmill of make good, and anyone who has got on that walk knows it never ends. Like young kids twirling and doing their dance then waiting for the applause of those they seek love, we all live life desperate for acceptance, for love, for the applause. Well stop dancing and hear the never-ending applause of your God. If you try and dance you will only trip, so just rest in his unending applause.
Application
I will tear up the ledger, stop the treadmill, quit the dance and enjoy the applause every day of my life. I will not build my theological house on a perform for rightness story, I will demolish that room every time I see it or hear its voice. I will declare my rightness in him, by him, and enjoy the intimacy that being right allows me.
Response
Thank you for not making me perform. Thank you for freedom and pleasure in you. Thank you that you foundationally and desperately are interested in being present to me, not me being good for you. I love the freedom of relationship this enables me to live in. This is a good life.
Meditation
Meditation – I become righteous through faith in Christ.
Consider:
Do you hear the applause of heaven over you?
Are you still dancing hoping to impress and earn acceptance?
JOURNEY DEEPER
