This year has been hard. An understatement if there ever was one. But God meets us in the hard. God uses the hard to mold, craft, and shape us. And what He has been coaxing out of me is submission to Him. Submitting to His authority, His sovereignty, His will, His plan, His desires, His Kingdom. Submission is a posture of the heart. Heart postures are an abstract concept to wrap our minds around. Outwardly we can say and do things that point to a heart properly postured towards Christ, but inwardly our heart can still be oriented towards ourselves or others. When our faith hinges on outward acts and words it is easy to mask and falsely lull ourselves into a sense that we are living on mission, but not genuinely submitting to God in a Biblical way. I write this sentiment from a place of conviction, because I lived that way for much of my born-again life.
Growing up in a pastor’s home, from all appearances I was the perfect little Christian boy. We woke at 6am everyday and studied the Bible together as a family. We never missed church, even when traveling on vacation. We memorized scripture. I learned to read by reading the Bible. By the age of 10 I had already read the whole Bible several times. Only Christian music artists played in our house. I never talked back to my parents and obeyed them. I accepted Jesus into my life when I was eight years old, and the Holy Spirit did move in my life and convict me of several behaviors once I was saved.
However, growing up in this atmosphere developed a young boy with a tendency to view the world through a legalistic lens. I was full of intellectual knowledge based-faith. The Word of God was in my head, but it was not cemented firmly in my heart. Not only that, but a critical spirit was within me. Imagine a twelve year old boy looking down his nose at anyone who didn’t listen to Christian music, who didn’t wear the right thing to church, who looked too much like the surrounding secular culture and didn’t distance themselves enough from a sinful lifestyle. I viewed myself as more pious and better than others around me. Because of the theology in my head and my outward acts. But none of this was what God intended when He said follow Him. This was not a heart directed to Him. I thought I knew God, but I only knew about Him. If you read twenty biographies on George Washington, you might think you knew the man. But you would still only know about him. To truly know him, you would need to meet him in person and spend time with him. My faith was based on logic and knowing about Jesus, but didn’t deeply know Him in my soul.
I was so legalistic at that time that I didn’t like reading the four books of the Gospels. The Gospels were all about a perfect man, a man named Jesus. And I was jealous. Jealous that He was perfect and I was not. I didn’t like that I couldn’t live up to God’s standard all on my own. I understood that I needed Him to be saved, but it was a begrudging acceptance. I couldn’t relate to Jesus, I felt like I could relate better to God the Father. The God of the Old Testament who spooned out judgment, who issued clear commands on how to live. Jesus spoke in vague terms, in terms that felt too abstract to really live out.
Fast forward to this year – in the intervening years I did come to love the grace Jesus gave and develop a personal relationship with Him – but the years of legalism have been extremely difficult to disentangle myself from. And when I am not intentional, I slip back into that mindset. It’s a default mindset, a tricky problem to extricate myself away from. Then God started prompting me to submit to Him, to turn my heart to Him. God did this through song, scripture, and dialogue with other believers.
In the Fall I was convicted by one of the songs at senior high chapel. It was not a song I had heard before, but it brought me to tears. The bridge spoke to my past mindset of legalism:
“Shake up the ground of all my tradition, Break down the walls of all my religion, Your way is better Oh, Your way is better” Make Room by Community Music
Shake up the ground of all my tradition? Break down the wall of all my religion? Your way is better? This was directly counter to everything I believed growing up. To truly believe that His way is better? When life was really hard and I cried weekly at work in-front of teachers, He was calling me to say “Your way is better.” No matter what, His way is better. To be resolute and firm in that sentiment.
As those lyrics percolated in my mind, my bible study led me to Psalms. And of course one Psalm stood up and smacked my works righteousness in the face. It said all the works of my hands are for nothing if it isn’t the Will of Jesus. “Unless the LORD builds the house, the workers toil in vain.” (Psalm 127:1). What am I supposed to do with that? As a high achiever who works so hard to do everything with excellence and as someone who believed that when we do things well it brings glory to God, how could I make sense of that scripture? God wants our submission. Yes, the works of our hands can do great things for Him, but He is the one building the house, building His Kingdom. Are my hands building my Kingdom or His? I become so preoccupied with the works of my hands that I often forget whose work was my hands.
The ironic thing is that Christian culture idealizes working hard and doing everything with excellence. But there isn’t a Biblical precedent for that (there are a few verses that suggest that, and certainly God honors our work, but within the whole narrative it isn’t the primary thing God is concerned with). The people God called to serve Him were not called because of the works of their hands, but because of their heart attitudes. We don’t know how great of a shepherd Moses was, but God called Him to lead His people out of Egypt. We don’t know how great of a fisherman Peter was, but Jesus called Him to be a fisher of men. We don’t know how great of tents Paul made, but Jesus called Him to establish tent poles of faith throughout the Roman Empire. Jesus used these men because their heart reflected His heart. So when we become tunnel-visioned on the works on our hands, our careers, our outward demonstration of religion and faith, we subvert the true Gospel message and proclaim a false Gospel of works-righteousness. And it can lead us astray (patient zero right here).
What does scripture then say on what attitude our hearts should have? What is a Biblical Worldview of who we should be as believers and followers of Jesus? Because it isn’t simply attending church every week, wearing the right clothes, listening to the right music, reading scripture every day, praying before meals, or other outward manifestations. Because I aced those at a young age. Those are easy. But I did those with a critical spirit and a heart with a mirror in front of it, only pointed at myself. And faith in Jesus isn’t supposed to be easy. If it’s easy, you’re doing it wrong. It’s going to be hard. It’s designed that way, because that is what leads us to the foot of the cross. We are meant to rely on Jesus for everything. To kneel at the foot of the cross and submit everything to Him.
Submitting to Jesus is how we take an active part in our sanctification (Philippians 2:1-18). And as Jesus loosened my heart, I started to grow in my faith. The more I submitted, the more I desired to be with Him. I had let years of complacency stagnate my spiritual growth and avoid intimacy with Jesus. We were not made to accept Jesus and stop learning and growing in our faith. We were meant to go deeper, to submit more, and in the process become more holy. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-23 says that God will sanctify us completely, but we are called to do three primary things: rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and give thanks in all circumstances. And this is the fun part – these commands have one thing in common – they are all a reflection of a heart attitude that is oriented to Jesus. Rejoicing when life smacks you in the face is not normal. Continually approaching the cross in prayer to lay ourselves down is not expected. Giving thanks in all circumstances? When a friend stabs you in the back? When your child is disobedient and causing a scene in the middle of the produce aisle? Who can do that? We can – when we submit to Jesus. This is what we are called to do. Not the legalistic Christian culture that I was raised in and mastered by high school, but to rejoice, pray, and be thankful through all things.
It gets better – this isn’t just a command to the believers in Thessalonica – these refrains appear again and again throughout the New Testament. Once my eyes were opened to this fact, I continually see a call to have joy, to pray continually for one another, and be thankful to God for the hope we have in Jesus. This is a blueprint for the Christian life! This is what it all comes down to – because to truly do this we must have a heart submitted to Christ. You can’t fake joy. You can’t fake prayer (not without ceasing anyway), and you can’t fake thankfulness. When someone cuts you off on the freeway, to respond with joy and thankfulness instead of curses is a genuine reflection of the sanctification work within you. This is what we should aspire to. Not what Christian culture has made it all about. Submitting to Christ occurs through prayer. Prayer is an alignment and orientation of our heart’s desires to God’s desires and His will. By praying without ceasing it is a perpetual call to have our heart and mind on things above and not on ourselves or the anxieties that are quick to derail our thoughts. Being in His will, and responding to the hope of Jesus by thankfulness softens our hearts and opens a valve for His love to flow freely. Being confident and secure in who He is and being aligned to Him ultimately is where joy is derived.
These are hard things. To open our heart and be deeply intimate with Christ. To trust Him fully and submit to His will, to say His will is better than our way is a hard ask. An ask that I continually stumble over and try to pick up the reins myself. And as a result, I lack joy. I lack thankfulness. I have a bitter judgemental heart. For now. The process of sanctification is remaking me in His image. And bit by bit I am being transformed. Joy, prayer, and thankfulness is the sign of Christ in us, and the agency we have in this journey. It is what we were made to do. Each day wake up with a heart in prayer, seeking His Will above, being thankful for the hope we have by the cross, and joy will flood your soul.
And so at the close of this school year I find myself asking and reflecting on these questions:
- Is the work of my hands building my kingdom or God’s Kingdom?
- Am I modeling joy, prayer, and thankfulness to students?
- Are we teaching students a proper Biblical Worldview or simply immersing them in “Christian” Culture?