God doesn’t want a religion with us, he wants a relationship with us. Today I’m arriving at our calling from a different direction. If this seems odd to you, I just ask you read through and see what you think. If you’re the kind of person who thinks God should be a part of your calling, then this will probably make a little more sense. Though, it may challenge some of your preconceived ideas.
Try Harder
Here is a diagram showing many people’s view of life with God:
In this view, we sin. This just means that we’re not perfect – as most of us would agree upon. Sometimes we like to think that we we mess up just a little, but if we peeled back the onion of our imperfection, we’d find that our imperfectness interweaves everything. In this approach with God, we then we accept God’s grace and forgiveness for being so messed up. And for many of us, our response is to try harder next time.
We get caught in a cycle of trying to be perfect, accepting grace when we fail and going back to trying again. We land in the religion of trying harder. We think that God will accept us only if we try hard enough. But this mindset only leads to guilt, sadness and despair. This approach puts us at odd with God. We become afraid to approach Him as we are never good enough.
Love
In contrast, I hardly think that Jesus came all the way to earth to die on a cross just to keep us in line. I believe that instead of holding us hostage in a sin/forgiveness cycle, Jesus death on the cross is meant to set us free. John 10:10 says that “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” This approach trusts in God’s grace and we are free to approach Him.
Instead of responding to God’s grace by trying harder, it would be better to respond by loving others. Here is a diagram of this new response:
If we dig into what it means to love others, I believe we will discover the concept of a calling. We won’t be able to deeply love people unless we discover and live our calling. When we are truly motivated by love, we will want to live a legacy of long lasting positive results in other’s lives. To do this we will need to bring our best – our greatest strengths in an area of our deepest passions and motivation.
Loving others deeply isn’t halfhearted or selfishly motivated. If we are living the life of trying harder, frequently we will be helping others with a motivation of alleviating guilt or to look good. When we are living the life of passing on love, we will be rightly motivated. We will experience joy and satisfaction and we will be more effective in our calling. We will also experience God more fully in our life as we let Him lead our efforts drawing us to greater risk and trust.
In summary, God’s grace frees us to live our calling, and our calling is all about love.
What do you think? Should we focus our life on avoiding sin or on our calling? Do you think these two are at odds with each other?
