Mind of a Christian - Chapter 2

Coercion or Loving Invitation? The Heart Behind Worship

So a second time they called the man who had been blind, and said to him, "Give glory to God; we know that this man is a sinner."

There will always be a call to bring glory to God.

You've experienced the good manifestations of it when someone brings you timely comfort in prayer, or when you learn something cool about the Bible, or watch any episode of The Chosen (yep, I'm not subtle at all in revealing my hands here).

But you've also experienced the bad side of this: your parents shaming you if you object to their faith; your friends dropping any pretense of friendliness and outwardly condemning you;. And we can scale this up to your friend group, or neighborhood/village, or your country's general disposition against non-believers. There's the subtle sneer or demeaning tone of voice because you're not one of us.

Maybe you are already a believer, and yet there's this overbearing pressure of, "You must be a missionary, or be in your church's leadership group, or do all the x, y, z to the glory of God! You're not doing enough, you're never doing enough, and you will never do enough."

It's overbearing.

This call to bring glory to God can be overbearing, and if you hurt in that way or similarly, I'm sorry and I do relate to it. Yes, even as a believer of four years as of 2021 (and even now 5 years in 2022 as I edit this), I've had those seasons. I had been burnt out from doing a lot of various church-centric responsibilities, and then to hear that I'm not pursuing discipleship enough, or that I'm still not giving my all, it felt overbearing - coercive, even.

But I don't want us to stop and make our conclusions there. After all, I still am a Christian, and always will be. I still agree and affirm that we must worship and submit our everything to God, and yet as we can see, there's this disconnect between the call and the reaction to it.

So let me invite you to think through this: if we can't avoid this inescapable presence to give our all to God, then there must be an compelling reason behind it - an appealing reason, even.

"I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls."

And so, I offer you an appealing reason: God is appealing.

If I stopped there, neither you nor I will be convinced, yes? So let's explore why and how God is appealing. Let's crunch some questions.

Who is God? How does He think about us in the all-of-humanity sense, and in the personal and intimate sense?

There are many places in the Bible that describes God, so let me choose two pivotal places: the first moment in the Old Testament where God explicitly describes His character, and where Jesus describes His very heart:

Then the LORD passed by in front of him and proclaimed, "The Lord, the LORD God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations."

Exodus 34:6-7

"Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light."

Matthew 11:28-30

If nothing else, the three key things about God that I want you to take away from this is that:

[1] God is compassionate and gracious. He sees you in your best and worst moments, and loves you in all of it. He laughs with your laughs, hurts with your hurts, and comforts you when no one else will.

[2] God is all for upholding good and eradicating evil. He sees the injustices that you and everyone experiences. And He promises to set things straight. He has done it, is doing it, and will do it once-and-for-all so that there will be no more crying or pain, forever.

[3] God is gentle and humble. He invites you into His presence because He knows that you're tired, and you can rest in Him.

He's not some taskmaster who wants to drive you to the ground. He's not some cold celestial being that's indifferent to your hopes and distresses. He's not out to shame you.

But rather, He's the father who embraces his long-lost son. He's the friend who sticks closer than a brother. He's the guy who will stand up for you when you can't even do it yourself. Yeah, He'll call us out on the wrong things that we love to do, but wouldn't we do that to our own friends because we care about them?

Why do I have to be bothered about it?

In the biblical narrative, God created us with intent for great and wonderful things. When we didn't want to go with His plan, we had a big falling out. In insisting that we do things our own way, we descended into selfishness, murder, and oppression.

I'm not calling you a murderer, but you can see how there are parts of you, just are there are parts of me, that can be pretentious, cold-hearted, or otherwise crummy.

But God wanted to restore us to a paradise-state, back when everything going on was described as good. He shed His own blood to pay the moral-legal cost of all of our smallest and largest mistakes, so that you can freely come back to Him. You don't have to prove yourself, or get your life straightened out beforehand - the debt can be cancelled and He can take care of it, and all you have to do is to receive Him.

That's why we're always saying things like:
come to church with us;
receive God and be saved;
devote your life to God;
sing praises to God.

Being all-powerful would suffice, but that's not appealing, and it honestly sounds scary and tyrannical. But that heart of His, it overflows with so much compassion and love for you, that it silences any objections and barriers you might bring up to speak hate against yourself.

He wants you to receive that, and the more we lean in on Him, the more we experience it.

If you're indifferent to the biblical narrative, at least consider - in both the practical and existential sense - the Christian claim that God will satisfy your deepest desires and purpose to the full.

So, an appealing God, you say? Yes indeed, and hopefully we'll spend some future chapters unpacking as much as we can.