There’s been a theme and boomerang to my thoughts here lately.
There’s been an idea that keeps looping back around to me from various sources and scriptures.
And this whole sweet message is something I feel like I should speak rather than scribble, but written words will work for now. It needs to get out of me somehow, because it feels a bit like its busting.
It’s this whole notion that my mission should be knowing Him rather than impressing Him.
This whole idea that my goal shouldn’t be to stay out of trouble with God, but to simply get Him.
Why do I make it more than this? Why do I insist on viewing my relationship with my Maker as a performance rather then a pleasure? Why do I make it harder and more harried than it needs to be? My relations with Him need not be complicated or coercive. Not in the least.
I’ve been hearing Him whisper that I can’t muster, draw, force, or create a whole bunch of right and righteous and glorious things in my own self. I can’t fix myself up with all the fruits of the Spirit before I present myself to Him. I can’t place love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control in my own flailing heart. That’s His job. I don’t need to come to Him already full. He’s the one doing the filling, not me.
I was sitting in a discipleship meeting, where the speaker ignited my thoughts on this. She pointed out that we aren’t the ones who produce the fruits of the Holy Spirit in us. The Holy Spirit does.
And it broke my yoke.
Ever since, He’s been driving it home….
Simply getting to know Him, will make me like Him. And in the knowing I’ll be growing, too.
Paul, that major penman of New Testament letters, he tells the people in Philippi that he wants to be found in Christ, that he doesn’t want to have a righteousness of his own that comes from rule following, but that comes from having a faith relationship with a God who gives and pours and produces good things.
He also notes that it is God who works in us to will and to work for God’s good pleasure. Get this! It is God who enables us to pleasure God! Does this wow and relieve anyone else?
Friend…
It’s not your buttoned up life that blesses God. It’s your broken one simply offered up.
What if we allowed this to really wash over us? What would happen if we simply opened ourselves up for the pruning, and allowed Him to do the producing? What would come about if we cut our ties to self-made righteousness, and simply sat at His feet for the filling?
I’d like to know.
Yes. We are the ones who decide to practice the deep disciplines of our faith. The praying, the fellowship, the service, the studying. We have to make a point of positioning ourselves before Him in this way – but it’s God who greets us in those things to make us whole again.
Take that into your Thursday. It may make a difference.
It will make one in mine.
