Last week I read a puzzling passage in Hebrews. So baffling it even felt (if I can write this without being struck dead by a bolt of lighting), it felt bizarre: “See to it that no one is sexually immoral or unholy like Esau, who sold his birthright for a single meal” (Heb. 12:16). I thought:
How in the world can God equate the deep betrayal of lecherous cheat with the puny sin of a hungry Esau?
Then I remembered an article from a well-known writer. A couple years ago he urged his followers to sign up for his goal-setting course called 5 Days to Your Best Year Ever. Let me quote his goals for that year:
- Publish a bestselling book and sell at least 50,000 copies in the first year.
- Get a six-figure advance for my next book contract by the end of the year.
- Make a million dollars in revenue from my business.
If these were the goals of a secular author, I’d merely pity his shallowness. But this man is a Christian writer. Though I suppose I still feel sorry for him. He’s a young man, unsure of how to handle success. He’s hungry for something—money or fame or inner-salvation—but I pity him the way I pity Esau. He’s selling his soul for a bowl full of gruel.
And God equates that trade with family-betraying adultery.
Are We Tilling Gardens or Digging Graves?
I love to brainstorm my goals; to examine my life and then concentrate where I sense God’s call; to shed distractions and nurture God-inspired pursuits. But whenever I invest my heart on the results instead of the call, I am preparing the bed of spiritual adultery.
It’s obvious when our goals are worldly: to write a “bestseller” or become a millionaire by the age of twenty-five. But what about the seemingly innocent goals of growing our church to five hundred people or helping our thirteen-year-old cellist become the next Yo-Yo Ma?
The nature of God’s call is always comradeship with him, not to measurable fruit. God calls Ezekiel to a full-time career in communication with these cheery words:
The house of Israel will not listen to you, for they are not willing to listen to me … Go to your people, and speak to them saying, “Thus says the Lord God,” … whether they listen to you or refuse. (Ez. 3:7 and 11)
Ezekiel was invited into relationship with the Creator, to listen to Him first and then to speak. God never promised a million converts, or a thousand, or even ten. He just called Ezekiel to listen and speak. Not knowing the outcome.
Are we devoted to a cause or devoted to God Himself? Whenever we try to force the results (and we DO try to control things, don’t we?), whenever we try to force the results, we are more devoted to our cause than to our King.
God calls us to till the soil and spread the seed, and then to leave the growth to him.
Our Blindness Is for His Glory (and Our Safety)
God’s great love for us may be most manifest when He blinds us from seeing the great fruit of our lives. Our human hearts simply cannot handle such glory and remain pure. My blogger friend from above claimed that he accomplished all three of his annual goals. But they didn’t satisfy.
So afterward he said that he finally found happiness in “my belief in myself.”
Yikes! Where is God in “his belief in himself”? My Christian blogger friend was looking for an inner salvation without the Savior, for blessings apart from the Blessor, he wanted the kingdom without the King.
This is not the way of God. Any inner-salvation apart from God is selling our eternal souls for a fleeting cocaine high.
God invites us into such a deep knowledge of Him—a delightful, intimate, connection with Personal Love Incarnate—that our greatest triumphs on earth will pale in the inexplicable joy of knowing Him.
Unending happiness is found solely (and soul-y) in knowing Him, never a belief in ourselves.
Ezekiel never got a million shekels from his ministry; he didn’t get a six-figure advance for his next scroll; he didn’t make the bestseller’s list; and he didn’t sell 50,000 copies in the first year after publishing (or even in his lifetime).
But 2600 years later, we are still reading, studying, and quoting from that ignored and unheeded prophet Ezekiel. It is precisely the miracle of God’s beautiful grace that Ezekiel never knew how famous he would eventually become.
He never sold his soul for any sort of “salvation” (or happiness or esteem) apart from God.
Sam
Thriving in (Not Merely Survival from) Past Sufferings
Awesome REAL stuff here Sam!
Loved your podcast and it answered my prayer last evening as I was chatting with God about this subject. Thank you.
Lloyd from down under!!! (New Zealand that is)
Thanks. I always appreciate your gracious encouragement.
Sam
This essay is spiritually perceptive as I’ve come to expect. Thanks for writing.
Leonard Cohen is one of my go to guys for challenging my thoughts about what my. salvation is, and what salvation entails, e.g., his song The Future has the refrain (haunting, really) that goes “When they said REPENT REPENT, I wonder what they meant.” It was probably Christians who were telling Cohen he needed to be saved but they were unwilling to go deep with him.
For today’s post, I was reminded of a verse from the title song of You Want It Darker, where it seems Cohen is struggling with the idea of salvation in light of the Holocaust:
They’re lining up the prisoners
And the guards are taking aim
I struggled with some demons
They were middle class and tame
I didn’t know I had permission to murder and to maim
You want it darker. —Hineni, hineni. I’m ready, my lord
When I think about sharing the gospel, or even evaluating my own version of Christianity with it’s polite sins, I try to think about how this would sound to a Jew leaving the Holocaust and hearing about salvation through Christ; or about friends and neighbors who would be ostracized and cancelled and worse if they were to turn to faith in Christ. Well, yes, it’s free but it costs everything, and boggles the mind.
Blessings, and thanks again.
Hi Bruce,
You always have a great musical addition, but you outdid yourself this time. I had never heard that song before, or especially that verse.
YIKES!! Great thoughts. Thanks.
I appreciate your straight-forward condemnation of modern day preoccupation with numbers and results. After almost 15 years of jail ministry, I have only had short term glimpses of what effect my teaching and prayers have had on the guys I’ve mentored. Jail is very transitional, so I only see some felows a few times and others come and go like the seasons. Because of this I have to simply trust that God’s Word will do what God says it will. Eventually. I do pray I’ll get a big surprise when I get the final report on the Last Day.
Hi Stephen,
Your jail-ministry experience is ever-so interesting. I had never thought of the transitional nature (at least we HOPE they are transitioning!) and how that would affect the sense of a fruitful ministry.
I pray with you that you’ll have a great surprise in heaven. And I bet you do.
Sam
Good post! As usual Sam.
I surprised that a Christian author would express his goals in this manner, but I, too, often feel like I may not “have done enough for God” which is like the other side of this same coin.
Instead, we should be content with merely being given the opportunity, by The Father , to communicate to his children, our brothers and sisters, without regard to how many, or even how deeply.
I have published one book “Like Eating Jelly with Chopsticks“. I have delivered maybe 20 “sermons”, but numbers really don’t matter to Abba, Daddy, or should they matter to me.
In retrospect, the only thing that really matters is that we have the opportunity to partner with God . To glorify Him, not ourselves, and to participate with Him in His Kingdom. Glory ! Amen!
Amen
Sam-
Thanks again for a thought-provoking article. At age 70 I am starting a new endeavor to help spread the kingdom of God among grandparents and grandchildren. I am praying that this is truly a call from God, rather than something to do in the next phase of my life. You are helping me with perspective.
Also loved soul and solely.
John
PS if I ever try to find happiness in my self, please slap me silly. that’s almost as dumb as trying to find happiness in my golf game….
Really, are you inviting me to slap you silly?
Don’t do that! I will be SO tempted 🙂
It’s funny. There are many things that I can feel “that is good enough” about. But golf isn’t one of them. Last year I had the very best year of golf in my life. The very best handicap of my life. Better than I ever expected to see.
Was I satisfied? Well … I only want to shave off one or two more strokes a round … is that so bad?
Sam- regarding your golf game…congrats and a great year…but don’t kid yourself (insert stupid looking smiley face here) (or a picture of me three putting for the 3rd hole in a row).