How Not to Swing and Miss at Life
I have four children, three boys, all elementary aged.
Probably the best part about being a Father (most days, anyway) is the moment I hit the door at the end of the day.
Most days, three monkey children climb me like a banana tree and beg me to do what is referred to as “Daddy’s House of Pain”: all three of them on the ground in a boy-pile being alternately dug into by my elbows and tickled slobber-faced until this “sweet and sour” treatment leaves them exhausted. Then, when they absolutely can’t take it anymore, I make them tell me I’m the best dad in the whole world, and that’s how they’re allowed to leave “the House”. And then they get up, laugh at me and tell me I’m too slow and dare me to catch them and do it all over again.
Here’s the thing- they aren’t just having fun; there is a much more primal thing, a deeper need being met.
How? Why? What are they really doing?
What they are doing is what the child of God desperately needs to do in a similar way: rejoicing in their status as their Father’s child.
Whether I hold my sons, kiss them, or wrestle with them- or do none of it- they are my sons. That’s the good news, that’s the fact of who they are. But the fact of who they are also comes with a kind of a status: their sonship, which they desperately need to experience.
And how do they experience their status? By coming to me, their Father, and rejoicing in it. They don’t call it that, of course- what I call “rejoicing in their status”, they call “Daddy’s House of Pain”: Elbows, hugs, kneecaps, and laughter.
And that status they rejoice in changes everything about how they feel about themselves and therefore produces one thing in their hearts: joy.
Which is precisely what the Bible calls the logical experiential outcome of your status. Let me show you how that works for you, right now, if you are a Christian.
Romans 14:17-18 says this: the Kingdom of God is not about eating and drinking, but righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, for He who serves Christ in this way is acceptable to God and approved by men.
What’s the verse talking about? How you and I get approval. Is it from God, or others? Most of us, including myself, go after approval in reverse: we say, if other people approve me, if I do enough good things, and other people notice and applaud, then I’m acceptable to God.
Over the last 9 months or so, while the growth of the church where I serve has been growing and bearing fruit, I had been through a series of difficult-for-me-to-handle scenarios, and I felt a bit a bit resentful. Was it right? No. Was it real? Yes.
And God, mercifully, led me to this verse right here, and asked me a question.
He asked me, “Are you doing it for them, or for me?
And I broke.
And I realized I had been like the baseball player whose swing and fundamentals had been flawless, but who had taken his eye off the ball. Listen, you can go through the motions perfectly, but if you don’t keep your eye on the target, you can perform as perfectly as you like, but it will only serve to wear you down. You can even hurt yourself by swinging and not watching the target, not keeping your eye on the ball.
So, what does the Christian keep his eye on? His status as God’s child.
Paul says right here, the kingdom of God isn’t eating and drinking- it’s not primarily about what you do- but he says it’s first about this: righteousness, which is the Greek word dikaiosyne, and means this: the status of being approved.
The kingdom of God, the Gospel, is about God’s approval, and if I have that, if I go to Him and let Him pick me up and remind me about who I am- His child, His son, I am the child of the greatest Dad in the world, what does that do to me? Paul says this- God’s approval leads to peace, which gives me joy. Do you lack joy in your life today? May I suggest, then, that you aren’t rejoicing in your status?
If you were serving God in this way- not just laboring, serving, but like a pleasure addict, going after your approval, your acceptance by God- than Paul says, then other people can’t help but, in the end, also approve you. If you go after one, you’ll get both. If you go after the other, you’ll get neither.
Which one are you after? Which one are you keeping your eye on?
Which one are you rejoicing in?
