“But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”
Matthew 6:33
For the majority of my adult life, I’ve been operating on the basis of building up my own little kingdom. I’ve chosen poor role models. I’ve listened to the wrong voices. More often than not, I’ve set my sights on the wrong things. I’ve been like a man furiously tilling ground in the desert, expecting a harvest from sand and gravel, frustrated at the obvious outcome of such a fruitless endeavor. A “striving after wind”. 1
Only a stupid person labors like that. As it takes one to know one, I can say that with confidence.
I’ve spent too much time chasing the wrong things. Who knows how much of it I’ve wasted by consequence of poor, selfish decision making.
The question I wrestle with now is this: what exactly do I do about that?
What I find strange, is living with a sort of internal duality—or rather, a seemingly conflicting set of beliefs. On the one hand, I live with a good number of regrets. Hindsight being what it is, I often wish I would have done many things in my life differently. The choices I’ve made that I wish I hadn’t, minimizing the importance of certain things and over-glorifying others, thinking the path to satisfaction—to a sense of worth, belonging, or “standing”—was by means of accomplishment or achievement, all serve as examples of how I feel I’ve missed it. I genuinely believed these things would usher in some sort of utopia of the soul—the promised land of self-satisfaction. That’s never been the case for anyone, so I’m not sure why I thought I’d be different.
On the other hand, and in spite of those regrets, I also believe in the reality of God’s glorious providence. That he alone is guiding all things, by His chosen means, to His appointed ends. As the Westminster Confession of Faith so wonderfully puts it:
“God, from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own free will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass…”
The Westminster Confession of Faith
Chapter 3, Of God’s Eternal Decree
There’s no doubt about that.
It’s one of the many reasons I love the story of Joseph in the book of Genesis. In spite of everything, God worked mightily in Joseph’s life, bringing him through betrayal, injustice, and hardship for God’s ultimate glory and for his ultimate good. In the many dark moments of Joseph’s life, God was there—he was faithful, and the end of Joseph’s trials allowed for the full display of God’s wonderful provision.
So there exists in me this tension of regret over the past, yet also holding the belief that in fact no part of my past was wasted—that things played out exactly as they needed to to bring me to the current moment. I know I could have made better choices in many respects (as everyone could), but I also know that God displays his might in the weakness of stupid, frail vessels like me. Maybe those same choices were what allowed me to see the fruitlessness of certain things—the utter futility of it all.
So getting back to the essence and the question at hand: what exactly do I do about that?
I think the answer is clear. The focus needs to be on the right kingdom and the right voice. The aim needs to be obedience. It needs to be thinking accompanied by action—and not an exercise in intellectual assent. Soft, weak, palatable Christianity without any sort of cost is less than worthless.
I regret not listening to Jesus. I regret reading my Bible, but in many ways layering worldly wisdom or qualifiers on the clear instruction of God’s word, dulling it’s implications and giving myself “easy outs”.
“Well it says this, but what it really means is this.”
“This is what it says here, but we know that it really goes like this in practice.”
Why haven’t I ever just tried doing what the Bible says with consistency and regularity? Why has it been so hard to simply obey what is so clearly communicated? How have I so consistently ignored Jesus’s words?
“Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me…”2
“…If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”3
I’ve made it far more complicated than it ever needed to be, to my own detriment. I’ve made excuses for myself, and in many ways never allowed myself the opportunity to really put anything into practice.
“You are my friends if you do what I command you.”4
It seems hard to ignore the implications of the above verses. To not do what Jesus commanded is to choose a side. It’s easy to see that. There’s really no debate on the matter. The Christian life is a matter of doing.