I was terrible at chores when I was growing up.
It wasn’t my parents’ fault—they tried many times to train their only son to be responsible around the house. My dad loved to draw and design, and he would come up with the most amazing chore charts. Visually, they were so motivating and appealing. I tried to use those charts. I really did. Every time he made one, I would fully intend to follow it. But within a couple of weeks, inevitably the chart would fall into disuse and disrepair.
Six months or so would go by, and my mom would decide—again—that I needed to help out around the house and learn character and develop a work ethic. So Dad would design another awesome chart.
That cycle was repeated pretty much until I got married. Now Chelsea is the one who tries to encourage me to be a contributing member of the household—again with little success. As I said earlier, I don’t really do a lot of things with my hands. My wife recently gave me a Valentine card that on the front said something like, “To my bug-killing, car-fixing, plumbing-repairing, house-building husband,” and I opened it up and on the inside it said something that I can’t repeat but implied that I couldn’t do any of those things but she loved me anyway. Basically I’m good at talking and at being romantic and not much else.
When I was a kid, there was only one chore that stuck. It was taking out the garbage. That was my one contribution to my family.
In our neighborhood, Wednesday was garbage day. Wednesday morning, to be precise, long before sunup. Naturally, I would always forget to take out the garbage until about midnight on Tuesday night. Worse, sometimes I’d wake up in a cold sweat at four o’clock Wednesday morning and realize that the sun had not come up yet, but the trash man would be there any minute. And if I didn’t take out the trash, I was going to be in very big trouble.
The reason I’d get in big trouble was because when Mom was mad, Dad was madder. Dad was mad because I’d made his wife mad. I’m sure he was thinking, My life is hard already, and you’re making it harder. Marriage is difficult without you assisting me, son.
I’m sure it’s a similar dynamic in most marriages. The husband gets mad at the kids or whoever the culprit is because they ticked off the woman he sleeps with, and that never works out well for the husband.
So inevitably, I would take out the garbage in pitch blackness. Now, I don’t like darkness. Didn’t back then, and don’t now. Some people enjoy the darkness. They embrace the darkness. That’s slightly disturbing.
I prefer sunshine and light. I like to see what’s happening. And if there is something out there that’s going to kill me, I’d like a chance to see it coming.
Am I afraid of the dark? I didn’t say that. I just said I don’t prefer the dark.
We had two different-colored garbage cans. Every week, I would pull them approximately fifty feet from the house out to the curb. It was usually dark, as I mentioned, and because it was the Northwest, it was often windy and cold.
On the way out, though, I was brave. I was carefree. I had my eyes open and my head up, and I owned that driveway. Darkness? No big deal. I would arrange the cans, and then I would stand on the curb for a second and calmly survey the darkness.
And start to wonder what was out there.
And if it was dangerous.
And if it was getting closer.
Every single time, I would get spooked. I would tell myself, There’s no one there, Judah. No one is in the bushes. It’s fifty feet to the house. Relax. You have the porch lights on. What is wrong with you, bro?
And every single time, without fail, I would run as fast as I could back to the garage. I was on the basketball team during those years, but my fastest sprint times were always the late-night fifty-foot sprints to the safety of the house.
I would get into the garage as fast as I possibly could and press the button. Then I would huddle against the door that led from the garage into the house, waiting for the garage door to go down, and it never was fast enough. It was the longest wait of my week. It was like one of those dreams where you are in terrible danger and everything moves in slow motion except the bad guys. Go down faster. Faster! He’s coming! He’s going to slip in! Aaaaggggh!
Then I’d regain my emotional composure and walk into the house as if nothing had happened. If my parents were up, my mom would say, “Did you take out the garbage, Judah?”
“Yeah, Mom, no big deal.”
Little did she know, my life was hanging in the balance for those fifty feet. What I wanted to say was, “Actually, Mom, I almost died again.” Every Tuesday night I almost died.
As I think back on those weekly brushes with death, one thing stands out: how inconsistent my pace was. First I walked coolly to the curb; then I raced frantically for the garage; then I strolled nonchalantly into the house. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t maintain a constant, consistent pace.
I’ve noticed that sometimes my journey with Jesus looks like my pace when taking out the garbage. There are days when I walk with such confident ease. But without notice, something changes in the circumstances, or my mind creates a scenario, and I go from walking to fleeing for my life. Some days I’m walking strong. But the next day—or the next moment—I abandon my steady pace and run away in panic.
The inconsistency in my soul, my walk, my behavior, and my relationship with Jesus is alarming at times. I start out as this confident, faith-filled person, but then I get one negative report and all of a sudden there is no God. We lose the Super Bowl on the 1-yard line, and suddenly I’m an atheist. It’s amazing how inconsistent I am. Why can’t I keep a steady pace?
Our souls need consistency. They need a steady walk and a regular pace. But the human soul is by nature inconstant. It is fickle.
The story of me walking the garbage can out to the curb only to run screaming back is just the human soul on display. One of the biggest issues our souls have to deal with in life is not the presence of negative circumstances, but the way those circumstances mess with our walk.
The Bible often describes our approach toward life and God using the metaphor of walking.
Walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us . . . Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. (Ephesians 5:2, 15)
Paul told Ephesian believers that walking is the goal. Not running, not sprinting, not hiding, not fleeing, not escaping—just walking. That might sound a little boring, but in the long run it’s highly effective. Just ask the tortoise.
Walking implies that our souls are experiencing steady, controlled progress. It means that we are moving forward. It means that rather than running for cover every time a threat appears, we are stable, we make good choices, and we have a positive outlook on the future. Steadily and surely, we are advancing.
Paul invited these ancient Ephesians to live a consistent life. Listen to his language. He said, “Look carefully then how you walk.” He wanted his audience to take inventory for a second. He wanted them to ask themselves, What does my everyday behavior look like? How consistent is it? What is my pace? Do I have enormous and horrible lows? Do I have days when my behaviors, thoughts, and feelings are dramatically different from other days? How influenced am I by my financial status? How affected am I by people’s perceptions or gossip about me? How swayed am I by surroundings or circumstances or positive reports or negative reports or newscasts or phone calls from distant relatives? How consistent am I in my journey with Jesus?
This is not a fun thing to investigate, frankly. It can very quickly become discouraging to look back on the week and ask yourself how consistent you were. If your disposition and personality are anything like mine, that is the last thing you want to do.
But that is just what Paul was saying we should do. “I want you to consider your lifestyle. Not your Sunday morning behavior—your everyday behavior. Examine the constancy and continuity of your soul’s walk. Are you stable? Are you consistent? Are you doing what God wants? Are you making progress?”
Often, we’d rather talk about how brave we are. How much faith we have. How much love and hope and mercy and grace we have. Those are sexier terms than stability or consistency. And yet this passage is saying that we need to take careful inventory of our day-to-day walk.
The word walk, as I said above, implies progress. The problem with progress is that it is often immeasurable and invisible. We don’t like to think that, though. We tend to equate progress with reaching tangible, visible milestones. We want to measure it, quantify it, and predict it.
When it comes to our souls’ walk with God, we want to see that quantifiable progress. We expect to be better: better husbands, better wives, better parents, better employees, better humans.
That will happen, of course. And when it does, it’s awesome. As we spend time with God, we will advance. We will change and improve. But we have to remember that the point of our walk with God is not arriving. The point is walking. The point is being in relationship with God and experiencing life together. Growth and change are great, but they are not the main goals.
In our souls’ walk with God, consistency is more important than growth. If we just stay the course, we will get to where God wants us to go. There might be a few switchbacks and setbacks and roadblocks along the way, but they won’t stop us. God sees the whole journey from start to finish, and he’s more focused on the pace and steadiness of our walk with him than on reaching some external milestone.
In another one of Paul’s letters, this one to the church at Philippi, he wrote, “I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6).
I read this a while back, and that first phrase stopped me: “I am sure of this.” Paul seemed to have no doubts. He was totally convinced and confident that God would finish what he started in these Jesus followers.
My first thought when I read this was, Am I sure of this for my own life?
That’s an important question to answer. Do we really believe that God started something on the inside of us and that he will complete it? If we are not sure, just imagine how unstable our lives will be.
I suspect that Paul wrote this because there were people in Philippi who were not sure of this. God wanted Paul to tell them that they could live with confidence and certainty because God was at work in them, and whatever God had started he would complete.
Sometimes I’m not too sure about the health of my insides. Is God working on me? Am I progressing? Is my soul healthy? What am I feeling and why am I feeling this way?
Then I wonder, if I can't even understand my insides, how can I determine if I'm actually making progress to a stable, more peaceful state? To be honest, I don’t think the goal of our walk with God is that we would understand every quirk and reaction of our souls. The goal is that we would worship and trust and be sure of the One who does understand it all. He designed our souls, he is at work in our souls, and he will carry us through to completion.
God is working on the inside of you. Remember, when we look at ourselves, we tend to think outside in—but God thinks inside out. God looks first at the inside. He is more concerned with our souls than our bodies.
He is in favor of our bodies, too, of course. I don’t think he minds if we pray to keep our hair past our forties or lose ten pounds before swimsuit season. But his priority is our insides, because our insides affect everything else.
Christianity is primarily an inside job. Following Jesus is first and foremost an internal operation. God is changing us from the inside out. He is the only source of a consistent walk and a consistent soul.
I have to admit, I don’t always live like I believe that. I say I believe it and I think I believe it, but many times I obsess over doing and becoming and achieving as if change were all up to me.
Human nature doesn’t like to admit that our progress and our growth are in God’s hands. We want to fix ourselves. And if we can’t fix ourselves on the inside, we often settle for that cheap imitation called outward behavior. The end result of this approach is forcing ourselves—and others—to look and act a certain way. That is called legalism or self-righteousness, by the way, and it’s not considered a positive character quality in Scripture.
Here is Philippians 1:6 again: “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” Let’s look closer at what this verse has to say about the progress and constancy of our souls.
First, notice the phrase, “He who began a good work.” In other words, our walk with God starts with God. This is paramount. This is foundational. Our God connection started with God.
Sometimes we say, “I led that person to Jesus.” That’s great. But it’s not true. Jesus leads people to Jesus. God connects people to God. It begins with him.
Let me take it a step further. The fact that you are reading this book right now, whether you call yourself a Christian or Jesus follower or not, is proof to me that God already initiated something in your life. God is working in you.
God gets all the credit, all the glory, and all the worship because everything begins with God. If you look at the Genesis account of creation, you realize this whole universe is for God, it’s about God, and it’s through God. We exist to worship and walk with God.
Begin is such an important doctrinal term. Everything begins with God. “In the beginning, God . . . ” (Genesis 1:1). Everything we do is predicated on the fact that we trust and follow a living God, a real God, who is big enough to begin a process in the human soul and faithful enough to finish it.
This is rather foreign to the human mind and experience. We are used to taking what we want, to making things happen, to being self-starters and self-improvers. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that God started this before we were even aware of him. God chose us. God revealed himself to our hearts. God drew us to him. Our progress did not begin with us, and it does not depend on us. It all goes back to God.
Where does God start this work? He starts in you and in me.
God is more than able to transform people on the inside. That means we don’t have to force anybody—including ourselves—to believe, look, act, or talk a certain way. That is God’s responsibility. That is his job description, and he is really good at it.
This can be frustrating, because a lot of us have discovered that a small dose of threats and condemnation goes a long way. We can guilt ourselves and others into making pretty significant changes.
So why wait for God? Why not just force change any way we can?
Because his kind of change is the only authentic, lasting, soul-level change. We can change the outside, but God alone can change the inside.
Jesus’ harshest criticisms were for the Pharisees. These guys were famous throughout Israel as the best God followers ever. Their actions and doctrines were impeccable, and they made sure everyone knew it. Yet Jesus called them whitewashed tombs, blind guides, fools, hypocrites, snakes, and unmarked graves (Luke 11:44).
I think Jesus used such strong words because he saw genuine danger. Merely fixing up the outside might make us look good and feel good for a while, but ultimately it backfires. The paint comes off, and the cracks and faults are still there.
God starts deep on the inside, and it takes time to manifest on the outside. We tend to be in a hurry to fix the outside because the outside is embarrassing. The outside gets us in trouble. God plans to fix the outside—but he is going to take his own time to get around to it.
Whatever God starts, he finishes. Think about that. You can’t find one place in the Bible where God started something and said, “Actually, I’ve changed my mind. I lost interest. This is too much work. I’m out.”
Now, if you are like me, I’ve started many things that I haven’t finished. I have no idea how many things I’ve started and then thought, I’m bored.
Not God. He finishes what he starts.
In one of the last verses of the Bible, Jesus says about himself: “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” (Revelation 22:13). In other words, this is so inherent to who God is that he calls himself the start and the finish. He names himself the A to Z. God is the beginning and the end and everything in between.
If God started a work in you, you can be sure he intends to complete it. Your hang-ups and mess-ups don’t take him by surprise. At no point in the process does he say, “This is more than I expected. You are in worse shape than I thought. I’d better cut my losses and give up on you.”
God has you in a process, and he is probably less worried about your progress than you are. He can see the end from the beginning. He sees the whole panorama. You might not feel like you are progressing, but you are.
Just keep walking. Allow your soul to be directed and guided by God. He is faithful, and he will work in you and on you for the rest of your life.
Someday, “the day of Jesus Christ,” as Philippians 1:6 says, this life and this walk will be over. God promises to guard you and guide you through life until that day appears.
This brings us to Peter, one of the twelve guys Jesus rolled with for three and a half years. Peter is a perfect picture of the journey of the human soul. In the Gospels, Peter seems to have had a leadership role among the other disciples. He was a fisherman, a blue-collar worker. He probably didn’t come from wealth or privilege.
Jesus called Peter, and God started working on the inside. Almost illogically, Peter dropped his nets and gave up his entire business. This probably would have been a family business that his dad had passed down to him, so there was a legacy and a reputation there. Yet Peter, at the words of Jesus, dropped his nets and left everything to follow Jesus.
Peter was outspoken, to say the least. He had a tendency to talk when he probably should have kept quiet. There is much recorded in Scripture about Peter’s awkward comments.
One of these is found in Matthew 26. This is the story of the Last Supper. Maybe you’ve seen the painting.
As Matthew tells the story, right after the Last Supper, they sing a song. I can’t imagine that Peter had a good voice. It just doesn’t go with his persona. I have no idea if that’s true, but that’s how I see this in my head.
So Peter is belting it out, and then Jesus quiets everyone and says, “I need to tell you guys something. It’s about to go down. I am going to do what I came here to do. I am going to die. Then you are all going to abandon me.”
Peter can’t contain himself, and he sputters, “No! I won’t abandon you! Even if these other eleven clowns here leave you, I will not! I’m your man, Jesus. I’ll be with you to the end, even if I have to die for you.”
“Peter, you are going to deny me tonight, actually. Three times.”
Hours later, Jesus is arrested. Peter finds himself at a bonfire outside the county jail, and a servant girl says, “Hey, you were with Jesus, right?”
“No!” Peter says emphatically. “I’ve never met the guy.”
Really? He just denied Jesus to a junior high girl. Junior high girls can be intimidating, but this is crazy. Peter disowns the man he swore to love and protect until death. Later he will go on to deny Jesus two more times, just as Jesus predicted.
Talk about fickle human souls. In one night Peter goes from “I will die for Jesus” to “I don’t even know the man.”
Has this ever happened to you? What comes out of you makes you question what’s inside of you. You say something, or you make a decision, or you do what you vowed you would never do. You seem to have no willpower, no courage. Moments ago you told people you would never, ever do this—and now you are doing it.
Sometimes in these moments, we ask some deep, dark questions. Things we might not say out loud, but we ask them of ourselves. Is this real, or is this just empty religion? Is this a scam? Am I really different? Have I changed? Is Jesus real, and is he doing anything at all in me? Because I feel like I haven’t progressed at all since I first met him.
As those words were coming out of Peter’s mouth, imagine what was going through his mind. What? Am I actually saying this? Maybe I’m not a follower of Jesus. I thought I was, but maybe I was wrong. How could I have done such a thing? What is wrong with me?
I was a youth pastor for ten years, and many times I heard young people say things like this to me. “I’m no different than before. This isn’t working. This isn’t real, and I don’t think it ever was. This isn’t for me. I’m out.”
We’ve probably all been there. That is certainly where Peter found himself after his colossal, public failure. So he did what the inconsistent human soul often does under pressure: he ran away.
Jesus was tried, condemned, crucified, and buried. And then, three days later, he came back to life. It is the greatest surprise ending in human history. Over the next few days, Jesus appeared several times to different people, including the disciples themselves.
Apparently, though, poor Peter was going through such extraordinary emotions that he decided to go back to his old occupation. Maybe he decided he wasn’t cut out to be a disciple. Maybe he was too embarrassed by his mistakes to face Jesus. Or maybe he just needed to clear his head.
So Peter and some of the guys fished all night. John 21 contains the story told by the apostle John. It is an eerie repeat of an earlier episode in their lives. They catch nothing all night, and then a stranger on the shore tells them to throw their nets on the other side. They end up catching a ridiculous number of fish, and suddenly John figures it out. “It’s Jesus!” he yells.
Jesus always did have a flair for the dramatic.
Peter jumps in and swims to shore. Jesus fixes them fish for breakfast. No one is asking any questions—they just look at Jesus while he serves them.
Then Jesus says, “Simon.” That was Peter’s old name. The name he went by before he met Jesus.
What is Jesus doing? Is he making fun of Peter? Is he saying he was still the same person as before? No—I think it’s the exact opposite.
I think Jesus was reminding Peter of when they first met. The name Simon means “reed.” Jesus is saying, “Simon, I remember when you were an average, ordinary guy. I knew you when you were a reed in the wind. I knew your humanity and your weaknesses. I knew you’d mess up a few times. And I called you anyway.”
“Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?”
Peter responds, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.”
Jesus says, “Feed my lambs.”
They go through essentially the same dialogue two more times. Each time, Peter insists, “You know that I love you.”
I don’t think Jesus is questioning Peter’s love at all. He knows Peter loves him. The real question is, does Peter know that he loves Jesus?
I think Jesus was trying to remind Peter that his walk with Jesus was real. Despite Peter’s frailties and mistakes, despite the conflicting emotions, despite the contradictory words and actions, God was at work in Peter. He was no longer Simon the reed—he was Peter the rock. For a while he hadn’t acted like a rock, but that was still how Jesus saw him. And Jesus had a future and a destiny and a calling for Peter.
I’m sure Peter had his doubts. But Jesus lovingly, patiently helped him back on his feet. He helped him see himself as God saw him.
Isn’t it amazing how we can talk ourselves out of a heavenly reality? In moments when we don’t feel like our souls are making progress, when we wonder why our walk is so inconsistent, we need the same confidence Paul had when he wrote to the Philippians: “I am sure of this—God will finish what he started.”
Notice that when Jesus found Peter on the beach, he didn’t ask him if he was brave. He didn’t ask him if he was committed. He didn’t ask him if he was self-controlled. He didn’t even ask him if he was sorry.
He simply asked him if he loved him.
There is a message in there for you and me. Our souls might falter at times, but our relationships with God are real. God put this love in our hearts for him, and it will only grow. Even when our emotions and actions betray us, God knows our hearts. He sees the seeds he planted in us and the work he began in us. And he has a plan to bring us to completion.
Are you sure of that? No matter what you have done, what you are going through, or what you will do, are you certain that the God who started a work on the inside of your soul will finish what he started?
That certainty will give you sanity. It will give you consistency. It will give you health on the inside.