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Exhausted: Why Pleasing God Can’t Be Our First Motivation
Have you ever felt exhausted by the Christian life?
Have you felt burnt out, like you keep running and not getting anywhere? Have you ever wondered why you don’t feel the joy and freedom Jesus talks about in the Bible? Have you ever felt like you needed to pretend like you have your life together, especially to other Christians? Do you feel like you’re showing up to church or Bible study just to check a box, but no one there really knows you?
You aren’t alone.
So many of us are exhausted but unwilling to admit it. We’re surrounded but feel so isolated. Why? What are we missing? What’s wrong?
There are a lot of answers to this question, but we think one of the foundational ones is this: we have made pleasing God our primary motive, rather than trusting God. Let’s unpack that a bit.
Pleasing God: Striving hard to be all God wants me to be
“At some point all of us find ourselves at a fork in the road in our spiritual lives. Suddenly you find yourself staring down two paths, two distinctly different paths. One says ‘Pleasing God.’ The other says ‘Trusting God.’” –The Two Roads Video
Of the two, pleasing God sure sounds more appealing than trusting God—pleasing God implies that we have something to do, some way to contribute to the relationship. It’s active. It sounds like we care, like we’re motivated, like we aren’t lazing around. We try to perform for God, try to keep Him pleased with us, while feeling like He’s getting farther and farther away as we continue to struggle and sin. Pleasing God sounds like a good primary motivation, so why does it lead to hiding, isolation, and pretending?
When we think that we gain and lose God’s favor by our behavior, we begin to hide from others. We can’t let them know that we’re struggling, or we might lose our place—we might lose their favor, too. So we hide and pretend, running as hard as we can to please God and, by extension, others. Even if we occasionally feel like we’ve pleased God, we know we’re on a razor’s edge of losing it again. Some of us are built for running and performing. We might last longer in the hamster wheel. But, eventually, many of us run ourselves into the ground. We’re exhausted from trying to please a God we feel is more and more disappointed with us. We’re exhausted from faking it to others, even those closest to us.
Pleasing God is a good desire. You won’t hear us say otherwise. It just can’t be our primary motivation, or it’ll imprison our hearts. We can never do enough good deeds or sin little enough to please God. It’s why we need a Savior. What we mean here by “primary motive” has to do with that which is the driving force of our very hearts. If our desire is primarily to please God, we will be the initiators. We will end up manufacturing all sorts of ways to do this, without trusting in the God we’re trying to please. We do this despite the clear teaching that nothing we do apart from trust pleases Him. Indeed, Paul observes that “whatever is not of faith [trust] is sin.”
Trusting God: Living out of who God says I am
There’s an incredible phrase in Hebrews 11:6: “Without faith it is impossible to please God.” The word “faith” is the noun form of the word “believe” or “trust.” Thus, the issue of pleasing God is inextricably bound to trusting Him. What the author of Hebrews is saying is that pleasing God is the result of trusting Him. There is nothing that we can “conjure up” to please Him that is not based upon who He is and what He has already done in and for us.
When our primary motive becomes trusting God, we discover there is nothing in the world that pleases Him more! We please God by choosing to trust Him. When our main drive becomes growing in trust, a whole new world opens to us. We get to exhale, trusting that He has already transformed us from a sinner to a saint as our primary identity. We can begin opening up and trusting others with our hard areas, because we know that who we are has already been settled by God. We can finally rest, knowing that we are fully loved and accepted. Incredibly, when trusting God becomes our primary motive, it allows us to run like we couldn’t before. This is no hamster wheel. This is the joyful race talked about in Hebrews 12:1-3. Fixing our eyes on what Jesus has already accomplished, we are free to run hard, not because it changes our identity or the Father’s love for us, but because we get to participate with Him in His work. The difference is that the first race exhausts us, because we’re running to try to gain something we’re afraid we don’t have. This second kind of race fuels us and fills us, because it’s rooted in joy, peace, and trust in what Jesus has accomplished.
But Won’t People Get Lazy?
We hear this a lot. We get worried that “trusting” is too passive and lazy (although any of us that have actually tried to walk the path of trusting God know that it is an incredibly active, difficult, adventurous journey!). This passage of The Cure addresses this fear:
The word “grace” appears 122 times in the New Testament. The Judaizers in the apostle Paul’s day hated it. They feared what it would do if it got loose. “Paul, you can’t tell them this!” they said. “These people are immature, lazy and have little religious background. They’ll abuse it as soon as they can. They’ll live Christianity-lite. These people are weak and want to do whatever they want. And believe me, what they want is not good.” Paul responds, in essence, this way: “You’d have a great point, if it wasn’t for two truths. First, these people have a new nature. They have Christ in them. They’re not who they were. They don’t want to get away with anything. They want to enjoy Him, and can’t find a way to do that within your ugly system.
Second, they have the Holy Spirit, who is able to correct, encourage, rebuke, and challenge. They have God, you know.”
Yes, if we don’t believe 2 Corinthians 5:7 that “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come,” then we might be concerned. But if we believe that Christ has actually transformed us, and therefore has actually transformed others, then we can trust that “he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion” (Philippians 1:6).
How can I apply this today?
- Identify one specific thing you want to grow in trusting God with. Your identity? His faithfulness? His provision? Your destiny?
- Commit to bringing this to God in prayer over the next week. You don’t need to conjure up a different feeling about it. Just keep telling Him that you struggle with trust in that area, and ask Him to help you.
- Tell one trusted person in your life about the area you want to grow in.
Watch The Two Roads, where we dig into this even more, or read The Cure.https://www.youtube.com/embed/mOJ1wUcP804?wmode=opaque&enablejsapi=1
FEBRUARY 25, 2020FACEBOOK0LINKEDIN0TUMBLRPINTEREST03 LIKES
COMMENTS (3)
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eric bauman4 months ago · 0 Likes
Good stuff thanks for writing this. I included an article with my own take on the matter
https://www.salvationblogger.com/post/a-life-pleasing-to-god
Ashley7 months ago · 0 Likes
yeah this was the most honest and clear piece i could find about my problem ty
CarolynA year ago · 0 Likes
Thank you for this article. It’s what I needed. God bless you.PREVIOUSWhat To Do (and Not Do) When You’re Feeling Spiritually Numb NEXTDoes Anyone See Me? Grace for Weary Daughters
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