Our family has a dog named Odie. Odie is an interesting dog to say the least. One night he starts barking incessantly. I am thinking that he probably needs to go outside. However, just a few seconds outside and it becomes very evident that he didn’t have to go. He wanted to track something outside. Now this is probably a good time to mention that Odie is a dachshund, not a retriever. But he tries his best to track things outside. After getting off the porch, he immediately puts his nose to the ground and starts tracking. Now I was able to see what he was going after. However, Odie was unable to see it because he kept his head down the whole time. We spent about 10 minutes outside, and though I could see the cat, Odie never saw him. What is the point of telling this story? The point is I think sometimes we as Christians can be like Odie. We can focus so much on what we are doing, that we miss seeing Jesus. But how does this happen?
I think it happens in a variety of ways. But the root cause of it all is the same. We measure who we are and our importance by what we do. That is to say we have an identity crisis. If your worth to Christ is measured by what you do for Him, then you will be on a never-ending treadmill of ups and downs. Some days things just seem to click. We get up before the alarm goes off, and we get right to our quiet time and prayer time. Then there are days when every thing seems to go wrong. We oversleep because we set our alarm clock for p.m. instead of a.m. The kids get up earlier than normal or they just seem to fuss and fight with each other and they make it impossible to get alone with God. When we don’t know who we are in Christ, we can believe that we have somehow let God down or that we are a failure. Or there can be times in which we fight temptation and overcome it through the power of God, and we think that God loves us so much right now because of it. But let a temptation get the best of us, and suddenly we are a failure because we sinned, and so there is no way that God could possibly love us. I wonder how many of you reading this right now can identify with this roller coaster of emotions? Again, I want to emphasize that it is because you are suffering from an identity crisis right now. You believe that your worth to God is tied to your obedience to God. So I want to say this, you cannot do anything to make God love you more than He already does, and you can’t do anything to make God love you any less than He already does. How do we know this? Because of the truth of Romans 5:8, “But God demonstrated His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Jesus thought we were worth dying for when we were sinners! So if He loved us that much when we were sinners, how could He love us anymore now? Should we be obedient to God? Absolutely. In fact, Jesus says our obedience to Him shows our love for Him. But don’t think that our love for God affects His love for us.
Pastor Justin