For the One Wondering If God Sees All You Do
For over a decade my husband and I lived in Manhattan. What originally began as a means of building our resumes, became an exercise in complete surrender to the story God was writing with us.
We chose to accept an invitation to stay in the City, have children, and help plant a church instead of immediately move back to our home state. This journey for us, while full of grief and adventure alike, constructed an unhealthy expectation in my spiritual life.
In my prayers, I presented God platters of good deeds, sacrifices, and accomplishments, expecting Him to return my offering with earthly blessing, favor, and gain. As time passed, life grew arduous. Soon I discovered the only variable increasing in my life was bitterness.
Did God even see all that I was doing? There’s nothing like ministry and motherhood to make you feel unseen. Did He even care?
Bitterness is bondage, and over time, the joy that used to permeate my spirit and relationships quickly faded. During a group counseling exercise, God spoke to me through a well-meaning friend.
“You know all of the good deeds you have done ‘for God’ are still filthy rags, right?” She said compassionately yet confidently.
I nodded in agreement while my heart tensed up in offense. The class ended and I exited quickly, but I couldn’t ignore her truth-filled words. In fact, 10 years later I’m still processing them. But they weren’t her words, they were from the book of Isaiah as he recognized his rightful place in the presence of a holy God.
“You come to the help of those who gladly do right, who remember your ways…All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.” Isaiah 64:5-6 NIV
The reason why our best moments and greatest accomplishments are considered immaterial compared to a holy God is because He is the One doing the doing in our lives. All that I own, all that I know, all that I experience is because of His doing, His grace, His redeeming.
Maybe you, like me, still need this reminder: true joy, life, and rest are found in the righteousness of Christ, not our own resume.
2 Corinthians 5:21 says, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (ESV)
The fact that my significance upon this earth is not dependent upon my resume allows me to:
Find freedom in saying ‘no’ more often to the non-essentials because it allows me to say ‘yes’ to the essentials.
Find joy in the moments of celebration because I know God is the one who orchestrates all things for His glory.
Find peace in the disappointments because if my life is held by Him, then I trust His no’s in my life are for a purpose.
I pray this truth frees us to savor our days in a new way, trusting whether in abundance or in lack, God is working. I pray when you question whether God sees you, you will know confidently that He does because He is the one doing the doing.
So now, the only invitation that needs accepting is to embrace his abundant grace, and continue on in love.