Do You Have a Checklist God? Or Do You Feel Like You Are His Favorite?
Doing the right thing is a virtue, one to be admired I think. People who do the right thing when no one is looking have integrity. Those are the people I want to be friends with and the people I want to hire. But can doing the right thing ever become a binding that entangles? A prison that traps?
I am under a binding of needing to “do it right”. I used to see this as a virtue. Now I see it as a binding. No, not for everyone, but it is for me. Let me explain.
I keep wanting to step out and do something I have never done before. I keep getting caught. First rope to catch my leg was fear of failure. The second rope was fear of offending or hurting other people. The third rope is the need to do it right.
I have always wanted to do the right thing. I have always wanted to listen and obey. It drives me. I see value in morality, even apart from faith. But recently I have seen how this how caught my leg. How it is tied me off from walking further. How it has tied me to a sinking ship.
For the longest time that faith was a list of rules that I obeyed. Faith was a checklist of virtues, habits and/or disciplines that I could perform. And I did well. I am a rule follower. If it is possible to be “good at faith” I think I was pretty good. I went to church every Sunday and stayed after to talk and “fellowship” with others. I lead Bible studies. I gave of my time, resources, and money. I served. I was always talking with Christians about how to find God, talk to God, hear God. I loved faith and I loved God and I wanted more, and there was no short supply of checklists from fellow believers or pastors or books about how I could DO more for God or to find God. If there was a new formula for finding more of God, I was in. I bought the rule book, took notes, followed the checklist. And it would work, for a while. For a while I would find freedom from the lies I believed about myself or the hurt I was feeling. I would feel on cloud nine and give ALL THE GLORY TO GOD! I would tell everyone about whatever was the newest book I read or checklist I completed or DOING that I DID to be with God. So much DOING. To feel it. To know it. To acheive it. Yes, I think I was achieving faith just like I acheived everything else in my life. With focus, hard work, discipline, and then came success.
For a while.
Until I fell the inevitable drop. Drop in self esteem. Drop in joy. Drop in faith. I would wonder if this was really faith, if this was really God. I told people more about the book I was reading than I ever did about God, because that book WAS my access point to God. I would read it, do it. The hearing, the reading, the list, the DOING would come in and I would check that list, achieve that goal, and it would bring me right back UP.
down. UP. down. UP.
I always wondered if this was faith. But I didn’t know what else to DO. This is all the faith I know and quite honestly all the faith I could find. This was the faith I heard about in church. This is the faith that makes sermons easier to preach and the faith that sell books. I mean, don’t we all just want to a checklist? DO this, and you will be saved. PRAY THIS and it will be okay. There is a rule book and we follow the rules and have a good life, and enter heaven.
CHECK.
Then one day I hear a woman talking about God and she says that she sits with God, has coffee with God, talks with God….and she always leaves those conversations feeling like she is his favorite kid.
I don’t feel that. I feel like I might get him to smile at me when I am good. That he isn’t angry at me today. But talking with him like he is my best friend? Feeling like I am his favorite? This is new. This is radical. Yes, I have heard it said about 9,000 times in church that knowing God is a relationship, not a to-do list. BUT, that sermon always seemed to have a to-do list attached to it. Weird, right?
With Karrie, I don’t get a to-do list. I get inspiration. I want to sit and have coffee with God the same way I do with my girlfriends. I have mastered the 1 hour of prayer. I have done that study. I have read the Bible backwards and forwards. But this, this is new, and I want to learn how to sit and talk with Him like that. Really, more than anything, I want to feel like I am his favorite. Can I be His favorite too? Could I feel like that when I sit with God?
God, I can’t wait to go have coffee with you. I am going to make a list of coffee shops for us to go to. Pretty ones. Ones that make me feel happy. I can’t wait to have coffee with you and tell you about my day, what’s on my mind. I am tired of “Church God” who always seems to come with checklists. I want to meet you…my father and my friend.
(taken from my journal. December 2019. Now I have coffee with God on a regular basis)
