Last night, someone told me that I needed to move in order for God to move. “You have to meet Him halfway,” he said. “You can’t just sit there and do nothing.”
Now, it’s true that he doesn’t know me very well and that the lack of movement is his interpretation of my life more than reality. But all of that aside, it drove home to me what I’d already been planning to write about today.
“There’s no way in the world I could ever meet God halfway,” I told him. “I’m incapable of it. That’s why Jesus came all of the way – the entire distance. Because we could never make it even halfway by ourselves.”
We are incapable of coming to God. Do we get to choose to come to Him? Of course! And do we choose to be obedient and to spend time with Him, to submit to His rule and reign and intentionally walk with Him? A most definite yes! But at the end of the day, none of that is enough. None of my choices to do the right thing is enough to make me righteous. None of my obedience can bring me close to Jesus. None of giving up myself and my desires will put me in a place where God accepts me.
The Christian life isn’t about discipline – reading the Bible, making good choices, being good. The Christian life is about God – and His son and His spirit. What we are powerless to do, Christ did for us (Romans 8:3). The moment we forget that is the moment that we begin to walk away from God.
You see, discipline is good (1 Corinthians 9:27). But it’s a very fine line between doing the things of God and believing that what we are doing will bring us closer to God – so that He doesn’t have to come close to us. In this mindset, we are earning our right to Christ, His attention, His affection, and His work and power in our lives.
Does He reward those who earnestly seek Him? It’s right in the Bible! (Hebrews 11:6) And our lives in Christ are not a fatalistic, hopeless bondage where we are powerless. Yes, we have the attention of the Father. Yes, we are able to touch His heart. Yes, He hears our prayers and answers us.
So with all of that, here’s my point for today: You can’t earn your relationship with Christ or earn the power that He gives through the Holy Spirit (Luke 24:49). Everything that He gives originates from Him. He came the entire distance to love us, to live with us, to accept us into the family of God. There’s no “halfway” here; we can choose to accept what He’s done and come closer to God, or we can choose to try for it in our own strength and move further from God. He would rather we do the former – but I’ll have to post more about that next time.
