I have a toxic trait – saying yes to everything. I don’t even know how it happened as one of my favourite things is saying no. Perhaps the difference is, in my older age, I don’t like going out or staying up late. I also, in the grips of my underlying anxiety and a busy full-time-work-and-single-mum life, can’t mentally cope with anything that involves planning how to organise the kids, their dinners, their whereabouts, my dinner, my travel….(my anxiety spiked just at ‘dinners’). So saying No (or the miraculous sense of release and freedom when someone cancels) is my number one option.
But when it comes to serving – well, if someone asks me to serve, I generally say yes. I sit on loads of committees and do writing and speaking. But lately, work and parenting has pressed into all the spare time I have so I had an innate feeling that I had to step away from something, but couldn’t bear the idea of letting God down.
Yes, you read that right.
I have a deep sense of learned behaviour from recent years that if I don’t keep “doing” that God will be disappointed with me. I must clarify – I have not learned this from God. I have learned this from humans. But the power of human interaction and how they shape our instincts, emotions and responses is deeply beguiling.
My responses (shaped by humans and the world) thought that not serving when asked to would mean that God could accuse me of not supporting mission work, not supporting proclaiming his name in a world that needs Jesus, not being as obedient or as faithful as I could have been.
When I spoke to a dear Christian wise friend, I laid my anxiety and panic before her. I didn’t want to let God down, I said. I didn’t want God to be disappointed with me, I said. And she said:
If only you could see yourself as God does. He could not be more pleased with you because he sees you through the eyes of his son. There is nothing you can do to make him love us more or be more pleased with us.
It shook me to my very centre. She is right of course but I had internalised these negative messages from my learned behaviour to the extent that it interfered with my relationship with God.
In Genesis 15:6 it says that Abraham believed and it was credited to him as righteousness. It is such an important concept that it was used by New Testament writers in Romans 4:1-22 and Galatians 3:6-9. It is Abraham’s faith. God did not credit Abraham with righteousness because of how he behaved, he credited him with righteousness because of who he believed.
So, now I am prayerfully considering where I can use my time and energy in the most impactful ways for God’s glory. For me, that is writing and speaking and being on some committees where they speak into the same subjects that I write and speak on. For me, that is women, families and complementarianism. That time is still sacrificially spent but joyfully so, and the smaller amount of time and energy I have is more focused on where I can make a difference.
When I get to heaven, I know that Jesus will not ask me why I didn’t sit on a committee. He will embrace me as I come home.
I need to focus on who I believe in because I know that Jesus is my Lord and saviour and I know that God rejoices in my salvation through his son.
“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.” Luke 15:20