If ever you find yourself in the driver's seat of your own "spirituality" ....congratulations, you may have started your very own religion. We like to find ourselves as "religious", or "spiritual", hoping that our hard work will surely be ample to please God. Yet we find ourselves like this apparently wealthy, religiously successful, likely community respected man in Matthew 1916-22. We walk away, sad, from from any encounter with the God of the scriptures.
Why?? What does a person have to do to please God? "Let Jesus take the wheel" ....at the risk of using another modern cliche. Sorry, it just fit. But REALLY DO IT! Let God be the pilot. How do you do that? Size your religiosity up against scripture. If it doesn't fit ....don't wear it. But most importantly .....quit trying to "please" God ...and just surrender to Him, submit to Him, obey Him.
I know, a tall order if He is the God the scriptures speak of. But it speaks of this same God who is full of grace, goodness, ready to forgive our imperfect self-religiosity (sin), and is not willing that any of us perish without Him. So what do we have to do? Confess Him as Lord. Believe He is Lord. Follow Him as one surrendered to Him. This will NOT be perfect!! If you're trying for the perfect Christian award ....you'll never achieve it. It's not about that. Instead, and last cliche of the day, we are imperfect people serving a perfect God. Wait, just one more cliche.... "His grace IS enough." Really.
