When the Lord started bringing some things to my attention this week, I knew they could be part of a blog. At first, though, I just saw a bunch of pieces. It was like I had the inside of the puzzle but needed the frame to understand what I was looking at. I asked the Lord to make it clear and was shocked at the picture I saw. Not only was the Lord dealing with me about the sin of self-righteousness, but He pinpointed a behavior of mine that I had in no way connected to that AT ALL. After all, it’s easy to identify self-righteous behavior in those who think that they are better than others or are “all that” for God. The biblical Pharisees taught us well. But this wasn’t even close to that. I just wanted to please the Lord, but one tiny fear was all it took to tip the scale to sin.
A Summer Project
I’m a teacher who is used to being busy most of the time. When summer comes, there is ample time for rest, but I also enjoy a few projects to keep my mind active and my credit card off Amazon. This year, I felt led to take an old hymnal I got off eBay and do some Bible journaling. I’m no artist, so that just involves me making notes and pasting in pictures I’ve found and colored. (If you’re curious, pictures and links are at the bottom.)
I have only done five of them so far, but what I noticed right away is that the old-time hymns are packed full of biblical truth and…well, humility. God is great and greatly to be praised! We are lowly and needy, but our great God came from Heaven to die on the cross to save us – and that was just the beginning! He continues to guide us and love us and keep us all our days even though we are not worthy.
My Takeaway from the Hymns
While I have been working with these hymns, I have had a strong feeling that a lot of Christians these days aren’t giving God His proper due. We aren’t loving Him, worshipping Him, and adoring Him ENOUGH.
Why is that?
Because we are not acknowledging our great and desperate need of Him. We know that grace saved us, of course, but we have been handling it from there. After all, we are following all the rules, tithing/giving, going to church, praying, reading the Bible, helping the needy, working hard in ministry, fighting the enemy, and loving the Lord. We are living the victorious Christian life being used of God even at great personal expense. Even when we’re tired and/or don’t feel like it, we’re doing it!
But what happens when we don’t?
A Tiny Little Fear
Last year the Lord had me fasting…a LOT. He called it a “fasting ministry” and led me to fast certain days and for certain things for almost 17 months. At the end of May, He let me know that my fasting season was over. I was at a rest. Since then, I have fasted a few days, but nothing compared to what I was doing before. One day, a thought hit me out of nowhere. “God loves you when you’re eating.” Leave it to the Holy Spirit to comfort us even when we don’t realize that we need it. I guess I was sort of getting nervous about my lack of fasting. I had been such a “good soldier” for so long, and now I was eating 3 meals a day virtually every day. Was God still pleased with me?
I had a similar thought another day when I came home from shopping. I hadn’t given a tract or talked to anyone about the Lord the whole time I was out. Basically, I was just a lady doing errands. Was the Lord mad at me? Then another thought, “God loves you.”
These were the puzzle pieces I was looking at. When the Lord connected them together with the idea of self-righteousness, I was startled. How could my fear of disappointing God be self-righteous?
The Sin of Self-Righteousness
It turns out that when I was worried that I wasn’t doing ENOUGH to be pleasing to God, I was saying that my actions, my works, were what was keeping God happy with me all along. As funny as it sounds, more than once, I had the thought that I wasn’t “God’s little dancing monkey.” (Remember those little toys with the cymbals?) The Lord doesn’t love me because I’m so great a faster, evangelist, churchgoer, or tither. He doesn’t love me less when I fast less, don’t always give a tract, or miss a service or an opportunity for giving. He loves me because I’m His child. When He looks at me, He sees me as the work-in-progress that I am. I’m pleasing to Him because of what He has done for me on the cross, not anything I could ever do “for Him.”
The (Sneaky) Temptation to Sin
Because of our fallen nature, we lean toward the idea that we can be righteous in and of ourselves. After all, we’re clear that when we’re lazy, do the things that we’re not supposed to do, or don’t do the things that we ARE supposed to do, those are sins. We’re bad, so we must repent to amend our ways. So that MUST mean that the opposite is true, right? When we are doing everything the way we believe God wants us to do, we’re good! But that’s the sin of self-righteousness. The Bible says that there is none good but God (Matthew 19:17), and we are righteous only through the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ on our behalf (2 Corinthians 5:21).
While striving to live the Christian life to the best of our ability is important, it’s not why the Lord loves us. We also can’t use it as a checklist to see if we’re right with God. THAT particular list has just one item on it: the blood of Jesus. If we have applied it to our lives by surrendering ourselves to Him as our Lord and Savior, we’re “good.”
The Lord is Worthy of Our Praise
“For they, being ignorant of God’s righteousness and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.”
Romans 10:3
The bottom line is that if we’re spending our energy working to make God “happy” — and worrying whether or not we’re doing a good job of it — that’s energy we’re not spending praising Him for everything He has done for us. After all, God’s grace isn’t just about salvation. It’s about our entire experience with Him. He saved us, sanctifies us, teaches us, and keeps us. Apart from Him we can do nothing (John 15:5). He is worthy of all our praise.
Try these other related articles: Modern Idolatry: Meeting Needs Without God or Worship God and Him Alone: A Cautionary Tale. Please sign up to receive my blog in your email inbox. You can find that at the upper right of your screen (or at the bottom on a phone). Also, check out my YouTube Channel where I read the blogs out loud. I also have a playlist of hymns from my church.
Curious About My Hymn Project?
In case you are also inspired, I thought I would share a little bit about the project. I ordered the Bible Truth Hymns hymnal from eBay (bottom right picture) and the journal from Amazon. For each one, I have been recording the Bible verse that goes with it and my favorite line from the song as well as writing down a summary and/or what stood out to me in the hymn. While I’m coloring, I’m also listening to the hymns in various versions and collecting the “best” versions of each one on my YouTube channel for fun. I picked this particular hymnal because the hymns are numbered, and there are almost 700 of them. So far, I’m really enjoying it!
