What Does God Want from You?
What does God want from you? Recently, my wife Angela was spending some time with Hero, our niece, at my parents' house. At one point, Angela wanted to snuggle with Hero and reached out her arms to Hero so she knew to come over. Hero, who is almost always ready to give, understood it as a request to give something to Angela, so she immediately started picking up stuff around her and offering it up to my wife. Instead of seeing Angela's outstretched arms as an invitation for some cuddle time, Hero felt like she had to start acting in a certain way to get approval. I think that we do much the same thing with God. We think that he is asking for us to give more energy, money and time to him as a sacrifice so that he will be pleased with us. Certainly, God does desire for us to be good and do things that honor him: "And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith" (Galatians 6:9-10). However, our relationship with God does not start or end with our good deeds; it starts with an embrace:
"And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked... But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ— by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus" (Ephesians 2:1-2a, 4-5).
God reached out his arms to us while we were spiritually dead and embraced our decomposing souls in his arms, kickstarting a chain reaction that would inject life into us. This process of salvation is finalized when we react to God's embrace by believing that Jesus died for us, that he is God, and that he ought to be the ultimate leader of our lives.
Why then do we feel compelled to do good things in order for God to like us? Does God want that? Why do we misread God's invitation to lean into him as a command to do more and be more? Because there is something inside of all of us that feels as if we ought to earn everything that we receive, or at least pay back the person who gave to us. There are definitely portions of scripture that relay the importance of our actions and how they can deeply impact us. However, the mistake that we most often make (or at least I do) is to think that our good actions are what bring God's love. But consider the above section from Ephesians again. When did God embrace us? It was while we were spiritually dead, meaning that God's love was not motivated by our good actions, but by his compassion for us who were spiritually dead and incapable of truly good action because we didn't have his life.
Why then is there such an emphasis on good action in the Bible? One of my favorite books in the Bible, the Letter of James, will help us out here:
"What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?" (James 2:14).
Here, we can begin to see the way that our salvation operates. This verse is not saying that our works create our salvation and faith, but that our faith produces works in the same way that a healthy apple tree produces apples. Once we are saved and forever alive in God, we start to have a motivation to do amazing, beautiful things for God. Our lives continue to grow in them until we begin to look like the produce section at a mega grocery store.
Today, I'd like to challenge you to lean into God, accepting his grace and his open embrace. Head out and start doing good things, but don't do them from obligation or a sense of repayment; rather, firmly attach yourself to your salvation and let it be a foundation for good actions. Never forget that God ultimately wants a relationship with you.