Motivation 2013

Welcome to 2013. Everywhere I turn I see signs of resolutions. New year, new life, new you. I hate to jump on the resolution bandwagon, but up I go again.

My life has changed so much in the past 10 years that it's hard for me to ask for more. The distance from where I was to where I am could only be traversed miraculously. But I'm human, never satisfied. Always wanting more. Like just about everyone I know, my goals revolve around health and fitness. As I approach the year, I have been challenged regarding my true motivation for this change.

The church answer for this would have to be something like "I want to be in better shape so I can better serve the Lord." Or maybe "my body is a Holy temple, I need to treat it as such." How about "I want my outside appearance to reflect the state of my soul." Yeah, I'm familiar with the church answer. If you know me very well, you know how suspicious I am of church answers.

Each of those have some truth to it, but I need to be honest and dig deeper. I have had a life long battle with clinical depression. This is a battle that has been won. But somehow, my eating choices feel like I'm killing myself slowly. Because of that, deep down I feel like this life and death war isn't quite as over as I thought. The monster is still lurking under the surface. It can't kill me quickly, but it's patient and is willing to go for the long slow method.

This fight is my motivation. With help, I've managed to defeat this beast at every battle. I'm going to win this one too.

Bored?

People close to me have asserted lately that if you're a Christian and your life is boring, you're missing out on something. In fact, I've heard lately that if you don't remember the last incredible thing that God did in your life, you are probably "doing it wrong." This isn't a health/wealth prosperity gospel variant at all, this comment was intended to be deeper, more personal. There are times God has used us in incredible and humbling ways that didn't lead to outrageous prosperity or fortune...our reward was simply being present when some incredible life change happened for someone else. Our reward was to be a witness to a miracle.

Now, I'm not one that believes that there are different levels of salvation. Saved is saved. If you're saved, it's impossible to be more saved. However, I am a firm believer in spiritual growth, commonly called discipleship.  Salvation happens once and is life-changing. Through spiritual growth, a relationship with God is developed.  If you stop at salvation, you miss out on the intimacy of a relationship with Jesus. You miss out on the guidance and assurance available through that relationship. You also miss out on the life of significance and adventure that is the result of a passionate pursuit of God (and His passionate pursuit of you.)

Am I great at this? Absolutely not. I was recently asked which of these five areas I was best at: prayer, solitude (in the context of Jesus isolating himself to focus on his relationship with the father), small group, time in the word, and trust in the unconditional love and guidance of the Father.  My honest answer was that I completely suck at all of them. Sure, I happen to be in the habit of consistently attempting them all, and maybe God's giving me credit for that. But, honestly, when judged on my results, I'm failing miserably.

Fortunately for me, I am not judged on my results. It isn't my effort that matters, and God seems like he's not done with me yet. This is still an incredible journey he's got me on. He continues to teach me about grace and unconditional love. His favorite teaching method seems to be continually giving both to me.

Gospel and Fruit

It's human nature to try and control our own destiny. At some level, we all believe we can save ourselves. At the very least, we can influence the outcome. Even those of us that have experienced a life changing salvation through Jesus Christ. Even though we know we're saved, we still want a checklist to follow. We want to be able to look at our own lives and convince God and everyone around us that we're worthy. Worthy to be saved, worthy to be loved. Daily quiet time, Bible reading plans, church attendance, even giving things to the poor and feeding the hungry are all often self-salvation projects. We do them because it makes us feel saved.

That's one of the reasons we have a love/hate relationship with the Law. The law gives us a guideline. If we can just figure out this law stuff and then work hard enough to follow it, we can be accepted on our own merits. We don't have to trust God to save us, it's up to us. We like control. At some level it makes a lot more sense to rely on our own efforts than it does to build a relationship with a guy that we can't really relate to (I mean, how many universes have you created lately?) and that we can't call on the phone, text, email, or meet for coffee at Starbucks. How do you build a relationship with someone whose voice you're not sure if you can ever really hear? Being a good person on your own effort makes a lot more sense.

The message of the gospel just isn't logical. It doesn't make sense. What makes more sense are the self help guides...full of checklists, dos and don't that lead you step by step into a more perfect life if you just follow them closely enough and perfectly enough. That's what we understand. That's what the law is like.

The gospel, on the other hand, says that the work is done. That's the good news. The work has already been done for us. We can throw away our checklists, understanding the crushing weight of the law that we've been living under. Now we're free from that, right? Now, what is our response to that freedom? I think our next move should be into John 15.