This weekend I was blessed with the ability to share with female college students at our annual Fall Retreat. I decided to post what I spoke on because I feel like God is calling more and more people to receive His love and healing. I hope this blesses you :-)
Righteousness
It’s such an honor to be able to lead the women’s discussion group this year. I’m also a little glad that we are not having another discussion on relationships, marriage, purity, etc, etc. If this is what you were expecting, sorry bout that. I know it’s a huge part of what we as women desire but there are things that I think about other than getting married. I mean I wanted to get married right after college, that was two years ago, I think it’s safe to say that I might need to focus on something else.
With that being said, today we’re going to talk about righteousness. You hear that word a lot discussed but never really defined and dissected. So let’s think about it for a minute. Righteousness. I was an English major so immediately my mind went, “ok, the –ness suffix denotes quality or condition, so righteousness means the quality or condition of being right. So what does this mean in a Christian context?
Righteousness, simply put, means having “right standing” before God. When preparing for this message I did a Google search for righteousness described in scripture. I found scriptures such as 1 Timothy 6:11 which says, “But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness” (NIV). Here’s another good one, 1 Peter 3:12 which says, “For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil” (NIV). Proverbs 21:3 says “To do righteousness and justice is desired by the Lord more than sacrifice” (NASB). I saw these and I was like, “Ok, that’s cool. It’s the bible so it’s God’s word and it’s right” but I didn’t really feel comforted. These scriptures just made me want to strive, when I know that other places in the bible say striving is moot. So what is the essence of righteousness?
I was thinking about how I personally relate to God with regards to my own righteousness. I realize that I might be a little skewed in how I view righteousness. I’m going to get a little personal with you guys. Growing up it was my duty to be the best at everything, particularly grades. I have an older brother who didn’t really try in school so it wasn’t that hard to pass the standard he set. I devoted myself to making good grades. I was a complete teacher’s pet. In elementary school I was the IT girl. I was even asked to sit on a panel of people who decided whether my principal was going to be named principal of the year. By high school, having good grades was second nature. It wasn’t even a question. There are three things that really stand out to me about why I wanted good grades in relationship to righteousness with God.
1. Good grades got me good gifts. When I got straight A’s my gift was like $300. I got paid. For someone with no bills that was a pretty good paycheck. That’s every report card, so for the year I could potentially make $1,200. Along with that, we would go to my favorite restaurant Outback Steakhouse. My favorite meal there is the Alice Springs chicken. I think I likened righteousness, or doing good deeds to this. I was always in a position of leadership. I was always ready to serve. So any time I would get blessings some part of me would be like ok, well I deserved that because I’ve been doing such and such. It felt like I was in right standing with God because all of these good things were happening and I was striving in serving in ministry.
2. Not only did I get great gifts, but I earned my parents approval. My mom gave me so much attention whenever I got good grades. This increased when I got to high school and started to get awards and acknowledgement. My mom beamed and bragged and just gave me so much attention that I had no other choice but to keep it up. I come from a broken background where my father left us twice and my mom was emotionally unavailable. However, when I got good grades, I felt like I earned and received their love and approval. I do this with my relationship with God too. It’s like the more I do “for Him” the more I think I deserve His love. It’s like I go to Him and say, “Here God! Look what I’ve done now! Look at me now! Love me now!”
3. The biggest thing I can look back at now and see about striving with good grades is as long as my grades were good, my parents didn’t really look at the real issues in my life. It was like good grades meant I was fine, bad grades meant I wasn’t. I know that this wasn’t the healthiest relationship to have with my parents but this was it. Good grades were my front. I was fronting. They covered up the real issues going on with me. I might have been struggling with crippling depression but my grades were good so no one noticed. I might have had serious issues with men in my life but my grades were good so no one noticed. I might have been making some of the worst decisions I’ve ever made but my grades were good so no one noticed. I realized that that’s how I was treating my relationship with God. I’m serving in Every Nation so I must be alright. It doesn’t matter that I was really dealing with depression again. It doesn’t matter that I was having a real issue with lying. It doesn’t matter that I was literally losing my mind, as long as I was still serving, still leading a life group, still singing on the worship team. They were my fronts. I thought I was being righteous and just giving myself willingly.
This is what I really want to focus on today. How many of you are thinking to yourself, “Ok, as long as I’m serving, hey I showed up to a retreat, hey I pray and read my bible” but all along not dealing with the real issues. How many of you are dealing with depression, dealing with a problem in a relationship, dealing with lust, dealing with masturbation, dealing with having been abused…These are just a sampling of the issues that I know are attacking the hearts of the women here. When I let myself really see the true issues of my heart I panicked. I knew that there was no way God could be alright with this. I knew that there was no way I was in right standing with Him. I knew that there was no way He could really love me. I had a thought, if I was the only one He had to die for, would He die for me? Did He really see me and my issues when He died on that cross? If you’ve ever, like I have, thought like this I’m here to tell you that God sees all of the junk in your heart and still chooses you. He still offers you the free gift of righteousness. He still loves you. He knew that there was no way you could by yourself fix the issue of your heart so He took the initiative. Isaiah 64:6 says, “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags…” Do you know what a filthy rag is? It is like your used pads and tampons. That’s what the bible is comparing your “righteous” deeds to. I’m not saying don’t do any righteous deeds because going back to 1 Timothy and 1 Peter God does place a value on it. We are to do them out of love and knowing that through Jesus we have right standing with God. If righteousness is a gift…let’s think about what a gift is. Let’s say I give you a car. This is a brand new, custom, tailor-made car for you. I give it to you for free, because I love it. If you get so consumed by trying to make it up to me that you ignore the gift, it’s a slap in my face. Part of the joy in giving a gift is seeing the person enjoy it. It makes my day when I give my friends a gift that I know was picked out just for them and they go crazy excited. It blesses me. If we’re rejecting God’s free gift because we don’t think we deserve it and we’re just trying to cover ourselves, it’s a slap in His face. He’s throwing the keys to us and we’re throwing them back at Him. It’s out of love that He blesses us. I love Titus 3:3-8 in the Message. It says, “It wasn’t so long ago that we ourselves were stupid and stubborn, dupes of sin, ordered every which way by our glands, going around with a chip on our shoulder, hated and hating back. But when God, our kind and loving Savior God, stepped in, he saved us from all that. It was all his doing; we had nothing to do with it. He gave us a good bath, and we came out of it new people, washed inside and out by the Holy Spirit. Our Savior Jesus poured out new life so generously. God’s gift has restored our relationship with him and given us back our lives. And there’s more life to come—an eternity of life! You can count on this.” You can count on this. You can count on God. I want to just take this time and let us all evaluate our hearts and see what our motivation is for doing what we do. This is a time for letting God come into our hearts and heal what we need. You can get into groups of people who you trust to just share and pray for each other. I encourage you to be real. Say out loud what you’re dealing with. God already knows and He wants to heal you.
