Is it hard to believe that God is more interested in you than what you do? That God is more interested in who you are becoming than what you are getting done? So often we are so concerned about our (or other people’s) behavior that we forget what really matters.

Psalm 1 declares that people who delight in the Lord are blessed. They are like like a tree firmly planted and tended by the streams of water. At the same time we are also warned about becoming too proud of our abilities and forgetting God.

God’s Message:
“Cursed is the strong one
    who depends on mere humans,
Who thinks he can make it on muscle alone
    and sets God aside as dead weight.
He’s like a tumbleweed on the prairie,
    out of touch with the good earth.
He lives rootless and aimless
    in a land where nothing grows.

God sees our hearts and examine our minds.
God sees who we really are.
God treats us as we really are, not as we pretend to be.

That’s why God is so much more interested in who we are and who we are becoming than what we are doing or producing.

When we live in a close relationship with God, we will – by God’s grace – be like trees that bear fruit beyond all expectation. But even then it is not us producing any fruit. It all just happens – by God’s grace – when our hearts are abiding in Christ. That’s why we should not be that concerned about doing stuff but about abiding in Christ.

When you’re steadily growing in grace, God will do great things through you. When you’re on your way becoming like Christ, God will make sure you will produce much fruit.

The deeper our roots are in God, the more Christ-like we become. The more Christ-like we are, the more fruit God can produce through us. That’s the way God likes it. That’s the way we produce most fruit. That’s the way to joyful, fearless and victorious living. Just the way we like it!

 

Gracious God,
Forgive us for trying to skip steps along the way.
Thanks for reminding us for sticking to what really matters:
abiding in you.
Thanks for being more interested in who we are and
who we are becoming
than what we are doing or producing.
Abide in us.
Change us according to your plans.
And let us bear fruit in due time.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen

Q4U: Who are you becoming?

Be blessed, my fellow pilgrim, as you abide in Christ all the days of your life!

* [As you might have noticed, I enjoy reading the Bible in different translations and love comparing them. I have started linking the Bible verses to Biblegateway.com so you can easily read (and compare) them in the different versions I’ve used while preparing each post.]

Image courtesy of Tiago Berezoski. Linking up today with Unite the Bloggersphere , Three Word Wednesday and #tellhisstory.