"It’s the Relationship, Stupid!"

"It’s the Relationship, Stupid!"
​The Christian’s Unnecessary Burden of Performance
(And no, I'm not calling you stupid.  Read on.)

I once was a Type A person.  You know the personality type: ambitious, impatient, highly organized, very time-conscious, and consequently, high health risk.  However, I believe that as I grew older, I have become more of a Type B+ personality, i.e. a little more relaxed, a little bit less neurotic.  Traces of Type A personality definitely still remain though.  I still love making detailed plans and ticking off checklists.  I still catch myself sometimes, competing against others or myself. 

Unfortunately, this attitude, the need to succeed at whatever we do, is applied as well to the Christian life.  Many who become Christians feel the joy of a new relationship with Jesus Christ.  But then they start to set ambitious goals and expectations about what they should accomplish as Christians.  “I will bring this number of people to Christ.”  “I will start this and that ministry and make it grow.”  “I will do so many things for Jesus!”

Don’t get me wrong.  These are good things, for our faith needs to be expressed in our outward behaviour and reflected in our external witness toward others.  But this may be taken so far that we miss the point of our walk with Christ.

In the past, I often found myself brooding about what I failed to do as a person and as a Christian, and the feeling of guilt was eating away at my joy.  It came to a head, when, once again, I spent a sleepless, restless night fretting about my life, the seeming lack of accomplishment, rightly or wrongly, for God, my family, and myself.  It was a night of worry (for the important and the trivial), of regrets, insecurities, feelings of worthlessness and indecision.

This struggle came with the twin-pronged evil of guilt and entitlement, so common with a performance-based attitude toward the Christian life:

1. “I have not accomplished enough. I am a failure in God’s eyes.”
2. “Lord, have I not done this or that for you?  Why have I not been blessed?”

But God somehow whispered to me in that moment of distress. (And I am very careful about saying that God told me this or that, as I am far from being blessed with so much sensitivity to his voice. But that’s another story.)

First of all, God brought my thinking to balance by showing me all the positive aspects of my life – my faith, my health, and my family.  Too often, we dwell on our troubles and do not focus on the blessings, large and small, that God has brought into our lives.  Such gratitude is both a gift, a grace that God blesses us with, but also an attitude we should always try to cultivate.

More importantly, God showed me that my worth – to him (which is what really counts, doesn’t it?) – lies not in what I do for him.  It does not lie in plans and accomplishments, no matter how noble or Godly they seem.  Whatever happens, what is most important is my relationship to him.  Do circumstances in my life bring me closer to God, or bring me farther away?

God does not need anything.  He really does not need my help to accomplish anything for him.  What he wants is to have a close, personal relationship with me.

James Carville, a campaign aide to then U.S. presidential candidate Bill Clinton, crafted the slogan “It’s the economy, stupid!” as a constant reminder for his campaign team to keep laser-focused on the issue that would win the election.  In the same way, I sometimes have to remind myself, “It’s the relationship, stupid!” when I find myself focusing on the legalistic, performance-based aspect of my Christian walk.  

“On that day, many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?  And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness’ ” (Matthew 7:22-23).

So, the things I do for him are irrelevant.  Now, before you jump on this statement, don’t misunderstand me.  We need to be obedient to whatever he asks us to do.  But oftentimes, we jump to our own conclusions about what God wants, and we base our Christian self-worth on meeting those purported desires.  So if we succeed, it becomes a source of pride, and if we fail, it brings a sense of worthlessness.

Much has been written about what is God’s purpose for me; as if that purpose was some grand achievement or a series of accomplishments that we need to devote our whole lives to.  But the danger there is we then start to obsess and presume what that purpose is, and because it’s “God’s purpose”, we think it’s incumbent for us to succeed. 

Oswald Chambers, in his classic devotional, “My Utmost for His Highest,” devoted several of his entries to emphasizing the right and wrong ways to think of success.  “We tend to think that if Jesus Christ compels us to do something and we are obedient to Him, He will lead us to great success.  We should never have the thought that our dreams of success are God’s purpose for us . . . God is not working toward a particular finish – His purpose is the process itself.  What He desires for me is that I see ‘Him walking on the sea’ with no shore, no success, nor goal in sight but simply having the absolute certainty that everything is all right . . . If we realize that moment-by-moment obedience is the goal, then each moment as it comes is precious.”[i]

So what are we to do?  It goes back to our relationship with God.  If we develop an intimate relationship with God and safeguard that relationship, we do not need to obsessively start planning and doing – he will gently guide us, day by day.  And our obedience will not seem like a duty.

And if we “fail” to do what we think he wants us to do?  That doesn’t matter.  He will get his way no matter what.  Besides, who is to say that we failed in God’s larger scheme of things?  What matters to him is that we stay close to him, and in the spirit of obedience, we do what he says without thinking about success or failure.  Woody Allen said, “80% of success is showing up.”

That comedic quip was, really, the key insight I believe God gave me that night.  I just have to “show up” whenever or wherever he leads me.  We just do what he says and everything will fall into place, whether we succeed or not.  And we don’t have to beat ourselves up if we don’t.  And when we show up every time, our day-to-day, moment-by-moment obedience leads to a closer relationship to God.  “Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him” (John 14:21).  At the end of the day, in God’s eyes, relationship is the only thing that counts.  That’s success to God.
 
By all means, make plans for God; strive to achieve them.  We should use our God-given abilities in the best way we can.  But don’t let those plans, and their achievement, be the central point of your life in Christ.  After all, “many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails” (Proverbs 19:21).

Chambers also wrote, “We do not know what God’s compelling purpose is, but whatever happens, we must maintain our relationship with Him . . . The most important aspect of Christianity is not the work we do, but the relationship we maintain and the surrounding influence and qualities produced by that relationship[ii] . . . If I wonder if I am being of any use to God, I instantly lose the beauty and the freshness of the touch of the Lord.”[iii]

So repeat after me: Just. Show. Up. “If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones” (Luke 16:10).

This outlook has since helped me whenever I fret at not having achieved what I felt I needed to achieve, or whenever I worry about not accomplishing anything significant in the future.  This applies to both Christian and secular work.  It is such blessed assurance from the Holy Spirit knowing that God loves me and values me no matter what I accomplish.  It releases me from the “prison of expectations” – even from what I think are God’s expectations, and frees me to enjoy my relationship, unencumbered, with Him.
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And here is a parting message, also from Chambers: “Living a full and overflowing life does not rest in bodily health, in circumstances, nor even in seeing God’s work succeed, but in the perfect understanding of God, and in the same fellowship and oneness with Him that Jesus Himself enjoyed . . . Have the right relationship with God, finding your joy there, and out of you ‘will flow rivers of living water’ (John 7:38).”[iv]
 
 A.G. Astudillo
 

[i] Chambers, Oswald.  My Utmost for His Highest. (Grand Rapids, MI: Discovery House Publishers, 1998), July 28 entry.
[ii] Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, August 4, entry.
[iii] Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, August 21, entry.
[iv] Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, August 31, entry.