Ready for your deep thought of the day?
Your view of you
is the greatest commentary on your view of God.
I wish that was original with me, but I’m not nearly that brainy. It’s from
the book The Cure, written by the
Truefaced guys, Lynch, McNicol, and Thrall. I could write for several hours on
how The Cure rocked my world and
nailed truth to my forehead, but I’ll stick with this quote for now.
I sometimes view myself as a slacker. And not just any slacker, but the
worst kind of slacker. A spiritual slacker. I hear about people rescuing young
girls from sex trafficking, adopting special-needs kids, finding jobs for
homeless people, going on family missions trips, and I wonder what I should be
doing to please God more. I’ve never doubted God’s love for me, but I’ve
wondered if I was truly pleasing to Him. Sometimes I picture Him looking at me
like a dad whose daughter ended up at community college when the dad hoped she’d
be off to Harvard. Am I living the spiritual equivalent of a community college
life when He intended Harvard for me? The
Cure’s fictional character has had those kinds of thoughts, too. He puts it
this way: “He’s disappointed in me. But He loves me enough to keep holding on.
I know He won’t leave me. . . . I just didn’t turn out like He hoped.”
But if that quote is true, if my greatest commentary on God is my view of
myself, what do my slacker feelings say about God? And what do they say about Jesus’
own words, recorded in John 6:28–29:
“What exactly
does God want us to do?” the people asked. Jesus answered, “God wants you to
have faith in the one he sent.”
Do I not believe Jesus? Why do I—and so many other people—think I have to
strive so hard to please God when faith is all He asks for? If I believe I
can’t be fully acceptable to God until I’ve earned enough gold stars to please
Him, then I don’t believe His Word. If I don’t believe I’m a saint, just the
way I am today, regardless of whether I spend the day preaching the gospel to
the poor or lying in bed watching movies, then I don’t believe Christ’s death was
enough to purchase my righteousness. I’ve made God into a liar and Jesus’ death
on the cross a sad, futile waste.
But when I believe that I am redeemed, that I am righteous, that I am a
saint who is fully, wholly, totally pleasing to God and that there’s nothing in
the world I could do to make Him love me more—then and only then am I rightly
seeing God.
Your view of you
is the greatest commentary on your view of God.
So how’s your view of you today?
