Wanting Power

Somewhere, we’ve missed it. I mean, we’ve big­time missed it. Somewhere, somehow, we’ve picked up the idea that if we want anything good from God, we have to be good in order to get it. If we want access to God’s power, our behavior has to be just so.

Now, I’m not going to tell you that your behavior doesn’t matter. It does. God is concerned enough about His reputation to not put you on the front line or give you top billing if you’re acting stupid all the time. But you can do all within your power to never ever act stupid, and to do everything right—and that doesn’t mean He’s going to put you on the front line or give you top billing, either.

How did you get started in all of this? The sad fact is that some of us got started the wrong way. Not only are we trying to gain access to God’s power by our own works—some of us got started in this whole thing by our own works. Born to God­fearing parents, perhaps, and raised in a God­fearing way, our experience with God is all about us doing the right thing.

This was basically my experience, until the Lord gave me a new one—one that was infinitely better. If you’ve been accustomed to being good and doing right, it could be very hard for you to believe that it could be better to be weak and to fail and to do wrong. The truth, however, is that even those who are busy being good and doing right are in fact weak and failing and doing wrong; they’re trying so hard and coming so close to meeting their standards of righteousness, however (and, incidentally, doing so much better than everyone else) they don’t see it.

The very best news on the planet is that there is only one way to attain God’s level of righteousness, and that is by putting one’s entire reliance on Jesus. Period. Doing right can never make you righteous. The only kind of right­doing that pleases God in the first place is the kind that comes out of faith in Him. He wants us to rest in Him and enjoy Him, and we can’t do either one if we’re depending on our right behavior to make us righteous.

I don’t believe you can know God and love God and go on perpetually doing stupid stuff. Knowing Him and His love will change you. You won’t even have to try to change. He’s so powerful He can change you without you even knowing it. So don’t worry about your behavior—just get busy loving God. While He’s changing you, you’ll make mistakes; and if you’re wise, every time you blow it, you’ll confess to Him and then you’ll ask Him for some big, outrageous blessing, just to prove to yourself that you aren’t depending on your own good deeds.

He’s willing to work through even the imperfect you.

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