Of What Value is Doing Our Best?

It was in the summer between my 9th and 10th grade years, that I made a commitment, that I did not make lightly, that even now, these many years later, I am yet to understand the full nature of. My commitment was to God what or whoever that was.

Prior to that point in my life, I had not darkened the door of a church to my recollection, nor had I been raised with the thought that there might have been a God to even be considered in all of this. My parents, if anything at all, were anti-God, as they had made very clear, and yet it was they who suggested that I check out church. You can imagine my confusion and I’m sure they had their reasons, but I have yet to find them out…

I was young, to be sure, but I was determined, however misdirected I may have been, to honoring that commitment.

Upon returning to school, my first year of high school, I made the decision that it would probably be best if I stopped getting high with my friends from junior high. As I should have expected, but didn’t, they dropped me like a hot rock when I told them of the commitment I had made over the summer as my reasoning behind not getting high with them. Somehow I thought we would remain friends, but I haven’t spoken to a one since.

There I was…alone…without friends at a brand new school…good or bad, is a matter of perspective, and that’s partially the point of this whole thing I suppose.

Over the years, I did my best to honor the commitment that I made that summer night on Mingus Mountain. I had determined that I would do my best to do for God, in whatever I saw needed to be done. I would live as righteously as one can. Given my understanding, age and background, I was reasonably zealous, if those two words can even be used together.

Throughout it all, there were times when I felt “closer to God” because I had what I considered to be good days, and times when I felt very distant from him because I had what I then perceived as terrible days. I was doing my best, but in the process I was missing the whole point, because I had been terribly confused about the true nature of my actions. While my motives were sincere, they were sincerely wrong. Hang in there, I’ll explain…

What I failed to understand was that an absolutely miserable and seemingly unproductive day, just might be the best and, oddly enough, the absolute most productive day one could possibly hope for, depending on which side of eternity you viewed it from.

During this period, I was involved with Campus Crusade for Christ, churches, youth groups, outreach ministries, all the usual stuff, I wanted it all. I wound up making many friends in high school who, in retrospect, understood a good deal more about what the life of a Christian should look like and far more so than many of the leaders I would wind up encountering throughout my Christian life.

What I learned during that time was primarily by osmosis, and through the teachings of what I would now say were for the most part very poor examples of Christ’s love and grace, for a kid like me who truly desired to understand it. Probably well educated, I assume they had been placed in positions of authority by virtue of their resume’s more so than any virtues they may have embodied. To this day, I do not recall a single teaching from them specifically, although I’m sure they did try on some level, just as I was trying.

That is except for one man, DJ Roman. He was my Christian seminary teacher in high school, and he made all the difference in my grasp of understanding the love of Christ. His heart was pure in his efforts, and in spite of my being extraordinarily rough both in appearance and social skills, while so many others including my parents were quick to judge and reject me, he accepted and welcomed me as I was. Teaching me as best he could the grace of God, and fundamentals of the faith.

In those years, I was the drummer for a band called, No Laughing Matter. A Christian band, that in the era of extraordinarily bad Christian music and cheesy lyrics, pushed a lot of those boundaries to the limit.

Not much of it seems so radical now by comparison, and I can’t even say with any certainty that we were either in a good or bad position with God at this point in our lives. We saw the need for change and the vigor and naiveté of youth made us believe we could be that catalyst. Whatever our position with God may have been, I do know that he used that band, despite of our many short comings, to do many good things for others.

However, at the age of 23, everything changed…my works, because that’s exactly what they were, came to their natural fruition, and my world came crashing down.

I won’t go into details here, because that isn’t necessarily relevant. The fact of the matter is, a world crashing down comes in as many appearances and definitions as there are numbers of people in any number of various given situations.

Whatever that may look like and however one arrives at this point, it is reaching this “bottom” as some would say, that winds up being the defining moment in the lives of many people. I believe it is simply because at this point, we learn who we truly at our core are because we are at our most raw and least afforded the use of our faculties in predefining which direction we will turn for resolve.

It seems we either 1) Do what comes most naturally, staying with the dysfunction we know and further our own fates, or 2) We wind up facing the unavoidable ugliness of ourselves and moving in unfamiliar directions for resolution because nothing else has worked.

Here’s how I got to number two….

Absolute bottom for me was found quite late, on a rainy night. That night I sat in my truck and cried, heartbroken and just plain broken, while I poured out my heart to God. I quit.

I quit trying, and I quit hoping, to do what I thought was right by my own efforts.

My best efforts had brought me here, and if this was the best I could hope for, I decided that I would no longer choose, based on my perceptions of right and wrong, what I should do or not do.

I had done what I thought I had been taught to do in all of those functions I mentioned above, and none of those teachings and systems had gotten me anyplace better, than those who had absolutely no regard for those systems. In fact, many of those people who disregarded God entirely, it seemed had fared much better for having done so. So why try at all? What value was there in doing my best?

Through it all, I made it quite clear to God that while I still believed in him, if there were convictions to be had at all about right and wrong, good and bad, sin and righteousness…if any of that even existed at all, then it was he that would now have to show me quite clearly, and then move me to following through with those things…because I quit!

I would quit seeking, quit trying, quit doing, I had quit being a “Christian” at least as far as I had understood what being a Christian to mean. I had seen where that had gotten me, and I hated it.

I made quite clear to God that he would now have to pursue me as I had pursued him and that he would have to show me that he desired my heart as much I desired his, or let me go, but until then, I would simply wait and go about my life in doing so.

However, as unexpected as it was, that is the moment that everything I knew about God moved from my head to my heart and my understanding of everything changed.

What I failed to comprehend was that God was in fact in pursuit of me all along…and that alone is what had brought me here, to this point.

That was the night, I began to understand what faith meant and what salvation was all about. That by my own might and will, I could not achieve a thing, and that was the purpose and message of the cross.

Surrender…

That I would say, of all the terms I might use, and there certainly are many others to be used, is the single most important term to come to grips with, in defining and comprehending what it means to be a true believer and follower of Christ.

The realization our vast need for God’s love, and his vast desire to love us, is the one and only thing that can turn the bondage we have come to associate with surrender, into a liberation we cannot begin to fathom outside of experiencing it.

Like so many lessons in life, to simply describe it does it injustice, if not actually cheapening it in the process.

For example, ask a mom what it feels like, the love for her children, and I can assure you that not even the most articulate of descriptions can come close to making you truly comprehend that love to the level that merely experiencing it does. She will make illogical, emotion driven decisions, that make no sense to those looking from the outside in, if she believes it is the best decision for her child. But to her, no sacrifice, no hope is too great in believing and desiring the best for her child, so those things make perfect sense to her. You would have to experience it to understand it.

And so I have found it is in matters of faith, mere words or actions will not convince anyone of what they are not ready to believe, in those matters of the heart and spirit, that God himself has not prepared them to believe.

That it seems, is the point I had arrived at.I was finally ready, although I could not have even fathomed that to be the case at the time.

I realize now, that often times it is our own self deception in thinking that we might understand the will of God, that proves to be our biggest stumbling block when we try to understand our place in it.

Like giving a predisposed answer based on what we think the question will be, when had we just taken a moment to be silent, and hear the issue through we would have found it to be an entirely different question all together.

I have found, through hindsight, that what I had often mistaken as feeling “closer to God” by virtue of my own efforts, was actually more of a sense of pride in having moved, maybe not away from him, but independently of him.

I felt in a sense justified. That some how I had found more favor with God than he had already shown before I even knew him, by doing something that might prove to him how good I am.

When the truth of the matter is, I am not good, not on any level, at least not by my own strength, and no one is. No matter how much we would like to believe otherwise.

Jesus himself asks at one point, why do you call me good? None are good except God. As a sort of exclamtion point to that, we can find that the bible also clearly states our righteousness is as filthy rags to God.

A bleak picture to say the least, if we think by any stretch of the imagination, that we might attain favor with God by doing some “thing”, be it of religious nature or charitable work. Our best efforts are in vain apart from God and certainly when it comes to thinking we might work our way into understanding his heart and out of our fallen state.

In consideration of the Christian belief that “man” was designed to be in relation with his creator, this independence in point of fact becomes the total opposite of the surrender we are called to have if we are to experience unity with him and know him in our deepest capacity.

What we can accomplish, independently from God, is of no value to our own relationship with him. That’s not to say that he will not use our efforts to his glory, but the bible clearly shows us that we do not have to be in accord with God’s plan to be used for his purpose. What I would say, what I have said, is that finding one’s self in that position is not an enviable place to be.

There is nothing we can give to God that he could not take because it is already his, and there is nothing we can do for God that he could not do for himself. Except for the willful surrender of our hearts, so that we might find ourselves in right relation to him…and that is his greatest desire. It seems, often times, the thought that we are capable of understanding the will of God turns out to be our greatest hindrance in being open to it, and truly believing that we know God’s will becomes the biggest cause of unknowingly working against it.

The greatest desire of the Christian should be that we might be used by him in accordance to his will, in whatever capacity that may be, to bring God alone the glory that he deserves. There can be no greater aspiration than this for those that believe.

And so we return to the question,”Of what value is there in doing our best?” Apart from God, none.Let us decrease so that he may increase.

d(-_-)b