Some days I have a hard time understanding there is nothing that I can do as a Christ-follower that God finds more favor in.
Really? He just loves me? I don’t have to go to church more? Volunteer all my time? Live in a hut sleeping on a dirt floor in a far-off land caring for orphans?
God does desire for us to do those things (maybe not the hut thing for everyone) because He wants us to reap the spiritual benefits of them. He does give rules and boundaries to His children because He knows the blessings that faithfulness produces…
BUT
He loves me just the same in this moment right now sitting in my home sipping coffee and listening to my children make up songs about Pokemon. Really? Are you sure? I’m not gonna lie. It makes me scratch my head in disbelief.
I know that there is no way to earn more love from God and I’ve just realized why.
It’s because God sees His Son in me. Christ has taken my place so it’s nothing I have done, can or will do now or in the future that swells more love inside Him for me. Christ’s blood covers my heart and we become woven together—and God does not see where He ends and I begin. When God looks down at me, our Lord Jesus steps in front of my dirty, sinful heart and all the Father sees is His perfectly beloved Son.
The only thing I had to do was ask Jesus to step in.
It is everything Christ has done for me on the cross. That breaks chains. That concept in itself is so freeing. Duh. All these years I’ve desired to please the Lord on my own ability with unfruitful outcomes.
If Christ is my center, Christ alone is in God’s eye-view and He is well-pleased.
Ephesians 2:8-9 “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is a GIFT of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.”
Galatians 2:20 “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”
1 Samuel 16:7 “But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”