What Does God Want From Me? (Phase One)

Lately I have been reading a wonderful book by James Bryan Smith entitled,"The Good And Beautiful God". It is part of a three book series on spiritual formation. In the book he states that, "Our thinking about life with God inevitably confronts us with this crucial question: What does God want from me?"

I bet that if we polled 100 people and asked them that question, I bet we would get a broad range of answers. But I think that there would be a thought that would be consistent in all of the answers. James Bryan Smith says,"If you ask the average person, What must you do to get God to like, favor and bless you? the answer would be clear and consistent: Well, I think I would have to go to church, read my Bible, give some money, serve on committees and serve the needy. Oh, and God does not want me to sin-or at least keep it at a minimum."

It sounds reasonable doesn't it? In fact, all of the things mentioned are good things to do. I think the answer if I were to try to simplify it has two phases. What is mentioned above is phase two. What we do is we try to do phase two without phase one. Have you ever had to assemble something? Well then you know the frustration when you try to put something together without reading the directions and it doesn't turn out right. You try and try to make it work, but it doesn't. To you, it just makes sense that you would put it together the way you did. But, after all the frustration, you finally go back and read the directions and you notice you missed a step.

Before we look at phase one let me just say something about sin. God isn't a kill joy. God isn't out to make our lives unenjoyable. God doesn't want us to sin because it harms us. He is actually looking out for us. If you were honest enough to examine your life, you would admit that not much good comes out of sinning.

When we try to live our lives for Jesus, if we focus on phase two without phase one we will get frustrated just as in the example of assembling something. So what is phase one? To know Him and love Him.

The Westminister Larger Catechism, written in 1648, opens with a question and an answer:
Question: What is the chief and highest end of man?
Answer: Man's chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy Him forever.

What I love about that statement is to fully enjoy God forever. Most of us don't think of fully enjoying God. If we aren't in love with God and fully enjoying Him then how can we enjoy church, the Bible, serving others, etc...? You see, it's the classic example of phase two without phase one. You will feel obligated to do phase two instead of, desiring to do phase two. I remember not enjoying going to High School. I would skip school very often. But every now and then there would be a class or a teacher that I enjoyed very much. Guess what? Because I enjoyed that class I couldn't wait to get to that class. In your spiritual life, if you try to do phase two without phase one, usually you will get frustrated, then you will stop trying, or think there is nothing to God.

Now if we stop trying to do the things that we think that God wants us to do this leads us to believe- that God is mad at us. We believe He's mad because we aren't doing what we know we should do. Then what can happen is that we try again, except this time we do it out of guilt. Guess what? Having guilt as a motivator never leads to lasting change. So after we try the guilt route, we get frustrated again and quit again. Which leads us to think that God is mad at us again.You can imagine what this thought process leads to: Whenever something doesn't go good in our lives we think God is punishing us.

What if God isn't mad at you? What if He loves us irregardless of our religious performance? Wouldn't this lead to "delighting" in Him? If God loves me regardless of my performance, then my response is to love Him.

His love for me first led me to love Him. That then led me to want to do phase two.To quote James Bryan Smith again," The narrative that God loves us and longs for us to love Him in return provides a genuine and lasting incentive to change."

1 John 4:10-11 are two verses that bring this thought out:

10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

The Message which is a paraphrase of the Bible puts it like this:

10 This is the kind of love we are talking about - not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they've done to our relationship with God. 11 My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to love each other.

You see, our love for God does not determine His love for us. God loves us first. In fact Jesus went to the cross and was willing to die for us before we loved Him.

7 For one will hardly die for a righteous man ; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. 8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
                                           Romans 5:7-8

This verse from Romans shows us again God not only loving us first, but being willing to die for us before we were "cleaned up" and loving Him.

That type of love is what leads us to loving Him. That is phase one. This will eventually lead to a desire to do phase two (go to church, read the Bible, etc...).

I'll close with another quote from James Bryan Smith,"The primary thing God wants from us is not improved moral behavior (which will come), but to love God because He first loves us.

Troy