I Can Do Nothing For God

This post and the one after it I wrote several months ago on my other site: theshadowforest.com. I wanted to post them over here since they were important points in my life.

I can do nothing for God. Wow. I know he’s been trying to get that message through my thick skull for years, but it’s just starting to sink in. (Somewhere my parents both just twitched, and they don’t know why)

I have felt for the past seven years that I had to accomplish this great task for God’s kingdom or doom and tragedy would certainly follow. I can do nothing for God. It’s like a three year old offering to buy me lunch. Or a three year old offering to do my taxes for the year. “Ahhhhh...that’s so cute Kent,” says God. “I AM. I do not need you.” (Thank you to Matt Chandler of the Village Church in Texas for this analogy-thevillagechurch.net. Actually this whole passage is inspired by a talk Matt gave on Easter Sunday of 2006)

But here’s the best part. He wants to know me just for who I am. Not for what I can do for him, but just for me. That is an amazing and freeing truth. Though, it’s a truth that is desperately hard to unearth in our modern world.

So much of what defines success in America seems to be based on what someone can do for me, or what I can do for them. It’s about the bottom line of where our relationship is heading. Naturally, I’ve transferred this fundamental base of relationships to my relationship with God.

Oh, but what a tragic misunderstanding of the ultimate, and most vital relationship! He doesn’t care about what I can do for him. He has already done it all for me. Through his passion on the cross, and his triumphant resurrection he has done it all for me. It is over, done, finished.  All there is left to do is know him intimately and personally with all my heart, mind, and soul. All else will flow from his eternal spring of living water, and quench my parched, ragged, thirsty soul forever. Thank you Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, amen.

I can do nothing for God.