It is not your living for God but letting God live trough you that will enable you live a successful Christian life. See more!
Not really perceiving and understanding this fact –that we can’t truly live for God unless we let God live trough us- leads to a mentality based on performance, therefore it is an outward motivation, a legalist thinking and all the constrictions that come along this line.Let’s take an example of most Christians’ lives today: go to church, sing in the choir, give to the poor, tell about God’s salvation to other people, dress the proper way and so on. All these are not bad things in themselves but have become a habit or a normality that you have to live up to if you want to be accepted in church.
Can an atheist come and do the same? Of course he can! He can be good to the poor he can come to the church every Sunday, can sing in the choir and all that! What then differentiates someone who has learnt to live like this but does not genuinely love God?
Sometimes we don’t even realize that all this church activism is done just to be accepted by other fellows and has nothing to do with the love of God for us. In the back of our minds many of us think "if I do this, God is going to love me more! If I fast more, God is going to accept me more, if I give money God will love me even more" and so on. Well, even if I was taught that salvation is not earn by my good deeds, somehow because I heard that I have to do something for God, to strive to do my best, I did that but it is only after a long time that I realized I have mixed the love for God with a certain duty I had to accomplish and when I did all these things I thought God would say"Well done my child" and this way I would earn more favor with God.
When we think like that the next step is to feel this quilt inside because you did not do more or better as there’s always room for more and there’s always room for improvement. And God knows you could have done better and more! Do you see here the condemning attitude? Well, guess what? Next time you will do more and better but … all this circle does is to improve performance and to create competition. The end of the circle is when you bump your head against the wall and realize that all your best efforts can’t help you live a life of victory.
I did bump my had against this wall, thank God! It was then when I woke up and realized that I was still trusting myself for a certain percentage, trusting that I could live for God. However, in His kindness and love for me, God showed me that it was not a matter of outside rules and sets of principles but it was a heart matter. Did I love God or not?
I understood step by step that I was so legalistic in my approach to people and God that I still have to carefully examine myself to get rid of this because I am sure I have lots of legalistic things in my life. However, I realized that to really live a life for God, the motivation has to come as a response to God’s love for me and me grasping to the best of my ability that God loves me infinitely already regardless of my fasting, my tithing etc. I can’t earn more of His love by doing all this things! He already loves me but when I fast, it is my heart that opens more, it is my heart that comes to a place where I can receive more of God’s infinite love.
An old lady once said:"I think that the people who follow God for fear of hell (and not out of love for Him), they’ll end up in hell anyway." I don’t want to say that this is necessarily so, but I want to point out that it is until recently that I have come to know that Jesus did not just die so that we would have our sins forgiven thus escaping hell. He died to offer us eternal life and eternal life means knowing God and His Son Jesus Christ. It is so much more than a free ticket to Heaven! Of course to go to Heaven is great (may we all get there!) but God offers eternal life now and here in this life! You don’t have to wait to get to Heaven and only then start to know God! He is very much alive here and now!
Therefore don’t wait, read the Bible, let it sink inside your mind and heart, think, meditate on it and apply it every day of your life; know that God’s love is unconditional and you’ll fall in love with God. Once you fall in love with God, nothing else, no other joy can compare to the joy of knowing God. It is like an addiction and you want a bigger and a bigger dose each day.
When you understand how much you are loved, when you let God pour this love upon you it is only than that you can do all the other things (like fasting, praying, going to the church and any other thing) with the right motivation. It is then when you stop comparing your achievements and it is then when you serve God most in every little detail.
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