How Do I Know If I’m Doing Enough for God?
00:00:00.000 | I'm anxious that I don't do enough for God.
00:00:09.300 | This statement arrives every single week in our inbox.
00:00:12.180 | We hear it all the time.
00:00:14.200 | In this case, it comes from a young man, a listener to the podcast.
00:00:17.640 | Thank you, Pastor John, for APJ.
00:00:19.400 | I am a follower of Jesus, and I just had a question about anxiety and becoming more like
00:00:24.700 | Jesus with that anxiety.
00:00:27.940 | Sometimes I feel overwhelmed because of what seems like a mounting list of things I must
00:00:32.840 | do to become like Jesus.
00:00:35.280 | I feel stressed out because I want to please God, but it feels like there's so many things
00:00:39.340 | to do.
00:00:40.340 | Kill sin, grow in fruits of the Spirit, be the best worker I can be, live and pour myself
00:00:46.240 | out to my community, my church, pursue people to disciple and mission, live a healthy lifestyle,
00:00:52.680 | Sabbath properly, and also endure suffering.
00:00:55.940 | I know Jesus said in this world we will have trouble, and he has overcome the world, but
00:01:00.600 | it just seems like there's so many things I need to do.
00:01:03.860 | Do I focus on certain things over others or try to focus a little bit on everything?
00:01:08.740 | At the end of the day, all I want to hear is, "Well done, my good and faithful servant."
00:01:14.940 | Pastor John, what would you say?
00:01:16.980 | That's a pretty impressive list of things to do that he gives.
00:01:20.820 | It is.
00:01:21.820 | Kill sin, grow in the fruits of the Spirit, be the best worker I can be, pour yourself
00:01:26.820 | out for your church, pursue people to disciple, live a healthy lifestyle, Sabbath properly,
00:01:33.540 | endure suffering.
00:01:34.540 | Oh my.
00:01:35.540 | But I think it will be helpful, even though at first it won't seem helpful, to make sure
00:01:42.420 | that this young man sees that the situation is way more burdensome than he thinks it is.
00:01:51.020 | If he keeps approaching the Christian life a certain way.
00:01:56.700 | For example, take this list from Ephesians 4.
00:02:00.340 | Put away falsehood, speak the truth, be angry, do not sin, do not let the sun go down on
00:02:06.020 | your anger, give no opportunity to the devil, don't steal, do honest work, share with everyone
00:02:12.080 | in need, let no corrupting talk come out of your mouth, give grace to those who hear,
00:02:17.140 | don't grieve the Holy Spirit, put away all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor,
00:02:21.860 | be kind to one another, be tenderhearted, be forgiving.
00:02:25.260 | Or what about this list from Romans 12?
00:02:27.900 | Show genuine love, abhor what is evil, hold fast to what is good, outdo one another in
00:02:33.360 | showing honor, do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord, rejoice
00:02:39.420 | in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer, contribute to the needs of the
00:02:44.980 | saints, show hospitality, bless those who persecute you, rejoice with those who rejoice,
00:02:50.460 | weep with those who weep, live in harmony with everyone, do not be haughty, associate
00:02:55.220 | with the lowly, never be wise in your own sight, repay no one evil for evil, do what's
00:02:59.940 | honorable in the sight of all, live peaceably with all, don't avenge yourselves, don't
00:03:04.500 | be overcome with evil, overcome evil with good.
00:03:08.460 | These 41 things that we are commanded to do just in two short passages.
00:03:18.020 | But let me, you think that's heavy.
00:03:19.980 | Let me make it really heavy.
00:03:21.980 | Do you know how many imperatives there are in Paul's letters?
00:03:25.980 | 13 letters.
00:03:27.540 | 431.
00:03:28.540 | Do you know how many imperatives there are in the general epistles?
00:03:32.260 | 128.
00:03:33.260 | Do you know how many imperatives there are in the gospels?
00:03:37.420 | 1022.
00:03:38.420 | So there you are.
00:03:41.760 | You want a list to be anxious about?
00:03:43.820 | How about 1500 imperatives for your list?
00:03:48.620 | So you have to make things worse sometimes in order to see wisdom.
00:03:54.420 | So what does that mean?
00:03:55.580 | What does that mean?
00:03:57.300 | It means that the Christian life approached a certain way is simply unlivable.
00:04:05.900 | To be specific, if you are trying to give focused, special attention to each of the
00:04:13.940 | individual commands of the New Testament, which would be about 1800, you can't do it.
00:04:22.380 | Not because you're lazy or worldly or sinful, but because you're finite.
00:04:28.340 | Your brain is finite.
00:04:30.380 | Nobody can remember, let alone focus all day long on 1800 duties.
00:04:37.620 | You can't keep that many things in your head, let alone give attention, prayerful effort
00:04:45.620 | to each one.
00:04:47.380 | So what are we supposed to do?
00:04:50.380 | And the answer is not, underline this, the answer is not, "Oh, well, I guess obedience
00:04:57.900 | doesn't matter."
00:04:58.900 | It's clear.
00:05:00.020 | Obedience doesn't matter.
00:05:01.020 | God doesn't care if we keep his commandments.
00:05:03.460 | Our young friend who wrote this question—didn't tell us what his name was—he's got that
00:05:10.220 | right.
00:05:11.520 | Obedience matters.
00:05:12.520 | He's right.
00:05:14.460 | Seeking to please the Lord by doing what honors the Lord matters.
00:05:20.380 | It's a confirmation of our right standing, our new birth, our authentic faith.
00:05:26.980 | It matters.
00:05:27.980 | You don't blow obedience out the window because there are 1800 commands that you can't
00:05:33.700 | obey by focusing on them with direct moment-by-moment attention.
00:05:39.300 | That's not the answer.
00:05:40.900 | So let me make three observations that I think point the way that God wants us to fulfill
00:05:50.220 | his words, his commandments.
00:05:52.660 | And I'm assuming that justification by faith alone is behind us, settled.
00:06:00.680 | We have a right standing with God because we have put our faith in Jesus as our redemption
00:06:07.620 | and our wisdom and our righteousness.
00:06:10.540 | The effort to bring our lives into conformity to God's imperatives is not an effort to
00:06:17.020 | get right with God.
00:06:19.140 | Our aim is to be conformed to Christ for his glory from being right with God.
00:06:26.900 | So here's observation number one.
00:06:29.160 | Each of those two lists that I gave—one from Ephesians 4 and one from Romans 12—interestingly
00:06:34.980 | and crucially began with the general call for us to be deeply transformed from within
00:06:44.940 | so that the fruit of our lives grows naturally on the tree of renewal rather than each fruit
00:06:53.900 | being pushed out by some intentional effort.
00:06:58.420 | For example, in Romans 12, at the beginning it says, "Be transformed by the renewal
00:07:05.740 | of your mind so that you discern what is the will of God, what is good, acceptable, and
00:07:12.900 | perfect."
00:07:13.900 | So, we should give ourselves to being deeply renewed, deeply transformed from within so
00:07:23.420 | that the discernment of the will of God in a hundred cases comes like fruit on a tree,
00:07:32.020 | not like calculated steps through a minefield.
00:07:35.540 | Same thing in Ephesians 4.22, but I won't take time to read that.
00:07:39.380 | So that's my first observation.
00:07:42.260 | Think first and foremost in terms of being transformed from within by the Spirit, by
00:07:49.900 | embracing by faith a new self that God has created and is working in us by the Spirit,
00:07:57.220 | which then overflows with proper responses in a hundred situations spontaneously.
00:08:05.300 | Observation number two, realize that the New Testament portrays some responses of the soul
00:08:13.900 | as roots and hundreds of others as fruits of obedience.
00:08:21.860 | Some acts are root, some are fruit.
00:08:25.300 | So we should focus on the deepening and the strengthening and the intensifying of roots
00:08:30.660 | like faith, hope, and love.
00:08:34.440 | Each one of those in the New Testament is pictured as producing life, the rest of life,
00:08:41.460 | the rest of obedience.
00:08:42.660 | Faith produces the obedience of faith, Paul calls it.
00:08:46.820 | Hundred good fruits come from having a right, restful grasp of the sufficiency of Christ
00:08:54.700 | and the promises he's made.
00:08:57.140 | Hope, same thing, gives rise to behaviors of freedom and love.
00:09:01.740 | Love is described as the sum and source of all other commandment keeping.
00:09:07.300 | Paul puts it like this, "The commandments, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not
00:09:12.300 | murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, and any other commandment," that's
00:09:17.100 | amazing, "any other commandment are summed up in this word, you shall love your neighbor
00:09:22.440 | as yourself."
00:09:23.440 | And then he adds, "Love does no wrong to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfilling
00:09:29.760 | of the law."
00:09:31.480 | Implication?
00:09:32.480 | So give yourself to the kind of inner spiritual renewal that deepens and intensifies these
00:09:41.360 | root virtues of faith and hope and love.
00:09:46.320 | And my last observation is this, Paul did not give us 431 imperatives in his letters
00:09:56.940 | for us to skip them and ignore them and say that all we need to do is go deep with love
00:10:03.720 | and we can just ignore the imperatives and not read the second half of his letter because
00:10:08.840 | that'll just turn us into legalists anyway.
00:10:12.000 | Now that's a mistake that many people make, and it undermines biblical holiness.
00:10:18.600 | It tries to be wiser than God.
00:10:20.960 | Oh, how many mistakes are made in the church by Christians who think they can be wiser
00:10:27.760 | than God by drawing inferences from things that he does not draw.
00:10:34.260 | He gives us these imperatives.
00:10:36.800 | Those imperatives, 431 of them, are not there by accident.
00:10:42.700 | They are there as signposts for our souls to see how we are doing in the deeper process
00:10:51.880 | of transformation.
00:10:54.140 | They help us.
00:10:55.140 | They don't get in the way.
00:10:57.080 | And the Holy Spirit uses the specific commands like "show hospitality," "don't use coarse
00:11:06.120 | language," "flee fornication," and 400 others as litmus tests to see whether our efforts
00:11:14.900 | at transformation are in fact bearing good fruit.
00:11:20.340 | So my closing word to our young friend is, thank God for your concern with pleasing the
00:11:30.320 | Lord and wanting to hear, "Well done, good and faithful servant."
00:11:35.720 | Thank God that you care about obedience and pleasing the Lord in your behavior.
00:11:41.620 | I don't want you to ignore the specifics of the New Testament, but I do want you to step
00:11:49.320 | back and realize that a focus on the specifics alone is hopeless.
00:11:57.120 | There are too many of them.
00:11:59.560 | Let the beauties of Christ and the greatness of his work for you and the spectacular preciousness
00:12:06.680 | of his promises and the power of the Holy Spirit work a deep work of transformation
00:12:14.320 | in your life, and then let the focus be on the specifics as a way of gauging the temperature
00:12:24.120 | of your transformation.
00:12:26.200 | Probably wise counsel on living authentically without getting overwhelmed by all the details.
00:12:31.800 | Thank you, Pastor John, and thanks for listening.
00:12:33.880 | If you want new episodes of this podcast delivered to you, subscribe to Ask Pastor John in your
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00:12:44.040 | in our archive or to submit a question to us of your own.
00:12:47.160 | You can do that online at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:12:53.240 | We return to the studio on Monday.
00:12:55.800 | Pastor John and I will see you then.
00:12:57.240 | I'm Tony Reinke.
00:12:58.520 | Have a wonderful weekend.
00:12:59.520 | We'll see you then.
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