Not long ago, I was sitting in a hammock in my backyard in California watching my husband roll the trash can from our backyard to our front yard.
It was a very tranquil moment. I was loving that my husband actually takes out the trash. But as he was moving the trash from the back to the front, something happened that caught my attention.
When my husband was halfway there, Foster, our son, who was one and a half years old at the time, ran up in his fleece monster onesie because he wanted to help. Aw, how cute.
Up to that point, my husband had been moving rather quickly. It had been one of those go-getter days, when you don’t even stop to think because you’re just being so productive. Rather than seeing our son as a nuisance, which would have maintained my tranquil moment, he slowed down and invited our little man to play a part in taking out the trash.
My husband tilted the trash can to the point where our son could put his little hands on the grungy handle and “help.”
They moved slowly. So, so slowly. At first, sitting in the hammock watching all this, I thought it was cute. But then I recognized how incredibly inefficient it became.
Something more than just taking out the trash was happening.
Then I saw my husband’s eyes as he looked down at his son. He didn’t care that it took longer. In fact, he seemed overjoyed to be having that special moment alone with his son, side-by-side, hand-by-hand. They smiled and continued. Ever. So. Slowly.
The next day, I was scheduled to speak at a college chapel service. Just before I stepped onstage, I asked the Lord for a word: “Lord, what do You have? What do You want to teach me before I go teach others? What do You want to share with me so I can share it with others?”
I listened earnestly. “You get to take out the trash.”
“Yes! A metaphor.… So good. Boom!” I thought of the sin-drenched audience and looked forward to taking out their trash!
But just as quickly, it was as if the Lord said, “Um, no, you’re playing the part of your son in the illustration.”
I was confused. “What do You mean? Are You saying I make You less efficient?”
That was when I realized the truth in what I’d seen the day before: God is the only one who can actually take out the trash. I couldn’t take out the spiritual trash or the emotional trash or the trash of the past or the trash of the present. I couldn’t. My husband couldn’t. No more than my son could take out the physical trash on his own. So how did I think I could stand on a stage and take out the trash for an auditorium full of college students? How could I think that I could, sitting in a coffee shop with my friend, take out the trash that needed to get out of her life?
Sometimes I get to be part of taking out the trash. If God invites me in. If I do it in partnership with Him. God, the one who is fully capable of doing it all by Himself, chooses the less efficient route … us. Why? Because that’s how He works. God cares more about our personal, intimate relationship with Him than our productivity for Him.
On that chapel day, God invited me to participate in what He was up to.
Sometimes I convince myself that I can take out the trash, that I’m really helping, with my own abilities. I’m sure Foster, my little son, thought he was really helping too. But if his dad were to have let go, the whole thing would have simply dropped to the ground.
God is standing right beside us, hand in hand, inviting us to play a part in the most epic story ever told.
There is one ginormous story happening all around us. It’s not our story. No one person on earth is even the main character. Not you, not me. But the God of the universe invites us to play a part.
We get to help take out the trash because relationship with you and me is so important to Him. He loves to do a partnership, a duet, with you, as He’s spinning out His epic tale. He not only invites you to play a part in His story; He also pursues you to be in it.
Let’s go back to the garden:
The LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?” (Gen. 3:9)
That’s what I’d like to ask you, my wonderful reader: Where are you? In this insane world of sin and shame and brokenness, where are you? What lies have you been believing? Where have you been running to find approval? Where are you as you hold your cup? In a place where you hold outward or upward?
Because the weird part about holding the cup outward is that other people’s approval actually does satisfy. It actually does make you feel okay about yourself if you can get enough of it from the right people at the right time. It will make you feel just good enough to get by, maybe, but only for a minute. But sometimes it’s only satisfying enough to keep you coming back for more. It’s exhausting.
But here’s something I’ve learned about this one big story we find ourselves in: yes, God’s the main character, but the good news is that God pursues imperfect people. And who God was, is who God is; and who God is, is who God will forever be. So, no matter where you are, no matter where you’ve been running to in your search for assurance that you’re a good-enough person, the fact is that there is a God who comes toward you. Who pursues you. When everyone else might want to run away from your mess, God draws near you.
The Bible is not a story of people seeking God. This is the story of a perfect God who pursues imperfect people.
So I ask you again: Where are you? God has placed you in a place, in a body, in a family, in a nation, in a situation—in this one time in history—and He has invited you to join Him in a story about reaching out to a world that needs hope.
Several years ago, when I was engaged and planning my wedding, I decided I wanted a very unconventional bridesmaid. I wanted Nanny, my grandmother, to stand with me as I got married.
Now, at that time, Nanny was ninety-four. She was from England, spoke with a thick English accent, drank Diet Sprite, and ate cinnamon-sugar toast in her house, which was right next door to my parents’ house.
One day, I went over to ask her about it. Knock-knock-knock. An hour later (or so it seemed) she opened the door.
I acted all surprised and said, “You made it!”
And she said what she always said to me: “You’re ridiculous.”
“Nanny,” I said, “do you want to go to breakfast?”
She nodded. “All right. Let me get my coat.”
Another hour later (not really), she had her coat and her purse and her walker, and we were finally outside her house heading to my car.
She braced herself on her walker and raised an eyebrow at me. “Race you to the car.”
I shook my head. “Oh, Nanny, I’m so sorry. I don’t know if you realize this, but I put my fast shoes on today. They are very fast. Are you sure you want to race me?”
So we started walking, and I was kind of letting her get ahead. And then, ever so slowly, she started cutting me off with her walker. She eased into my path and then really started trying to put the pedal to the metal.
She was pretty fast, I have to admit.
I still beat her, though. I told you: fast shoes.
We finally got to breakfast, and I asked her to be in my wedding. She was delighted and agreed to being the first ninety-four-year-old bridesmaid she had ever heard of.
But the story takes a sad detour. I asked her in August to be in my wedding, but in September she had a stroke.
You know those days when nothing else seems to matter except the one burden on your heart? Have you had those days? The day I found out about her stroke was one of them for me. Nanny, who was supposed to walk down the aisle in my wedding, was in a hospital bed, alive only because of a bunch of tubes.
I remember just losing it in the hospital. My sister held me up as we hugged. And I was angry. “Why?” Have you ever asked that question of God?
And I recall my dad said, “Hey, we’re not going to know anything for a while. So why don’t we all go do what we normally do, and we’ll meet up tonight?”
At the time, I was teaching at a Christian university. I think I cried during the entire forty-five-minute drive to the campus.
When I got to my classroom, I sat at my desk, holding back the tears, and my students walked in like it was just another day. It wasn’t their fault. For them, it probably was a normal day. They couldn’t know what was happening in my life. But I looked down at my notes and then up at my students, and for some reason, I couldn’t go on like normal. This doesn’t matter, I thought. None of this matters with Nanny in the hospital. I’m just going to leave.
But by then, the students were all there and it was time for class.
I stood up with my notes like I was going to teach, but then I dropped the notes on the floor and said, “Forget that!”
A really nervous girl in the front row looked at me, very worried. “Do we write that down?”
“No, don’t write that down.” I sighed. “I’m dealing with bad news, and I need good news. We’re at a Christian college, so we should all know about the good news called the gospel. So will someone share the gospel with me? I’m in need of some good news.”
They all looked at each other.
“Anyone?” I asked.
Nobody would meet my eyes. This whole room full of college students slowly put their heads down on the tables.
“Come on. I need the gospel. I need really good news that somehow meets really bad news … and wins. Someone give me the gospel. Somebody remind me why Jesus came. Why He died. What His resurrection has to do with me today. Why it changes me. I need it to change me today.”
Still nothing. So I started calling on people.
“Ryan?”
Ryan’s eyes got really big.
“Yes, Ryan. Stand up and tell us the gospel.”
He sank into his chair. “Nah, I’m good.”
So I turned to Aimee, then Haley, then Braxton, then Josiah. Nobody was willing to attempt to share the gospel.
If I asked you to tell me the gospel, what would you say? If you claim to believe something, shouldn’t you be able to explain it? I don’t mean that you know every last theological argument and have the whole Bible memorized. I just mean, do you know the essence of this faith you say is the answer for all humankind?
When I was young, I heard a Christian speaker share the gospel. He did it in a captivating and clear way, and he gave us specific Bible verses that explained the essential truths. I wrote those references down on a page in the back of my Bible. (They were all from Romans: 1:19–21, 25; 3:23; 5:8; 6:23; 8:1; 10:9–11; and 12:1–2.) After that, if I was ever asked who Jesus was or why He matters or why I’m living for Him, I would go back to that page in my Bible and utilize those Scriptures.
That sad day in class, I opened my Bible and read each of those seven passages to my class. If they couldn’t give me the good news, I was going to give it to myself straight from the Word of God. At that point, I was worried about Nanny and sad for my students (who weren’t sure how to share the gospel explicitly) and also disappointed with myself (for not having taught it to them). So I read those verses, gathered my stuff, and just left them all sitting there.
Throughout the rest of that class hour and into my break period, I received texts and e-mails from them. They said things like this:
I read each e-mail and text and got more and more convinced of what I needed to do. So you can imagine what my poor second class encountered in their teacher. I had become … Super Preacher.
As they walked into the room, I was thinking, Oh, you get ready, suckas, because you have no idea what’s about to happen.
They sat. I threw my notes and preached: “Do you know the gospel?” I spoke with all my heart and simply let God share His good news through me. People’s lives were changed. Praise be to God!
But not because of what I said. I can’t change lives—not yours or anyone else’s. No preacher or teacher or anyone else can change your life in the God direction. Oh, people can tell you truths like, “God loves you,” but no one can convince you. That’s God’s job.
As my experience that day in class demonstrated, the big story of God is something He’s doing, but it still involves you, and the Bible tells all about it.
This guy named Paul is a great person to teach us what God’s big story is about.
Now, Paul had baggage. Before he became a Christian and had his whole life altered, he was called Saul, and he hated, hated Christians. He considered them a terrible threat to the Jewish religion and way of life. Then Saul met Jesus in a dramatic way and was radically changed, and he went on to write the majority of what we now call the New Testament.
You know what that tells me, my friend? It tells me that God can do whatever He wants with whomever He wants, whenever He wants.
Do you know someone who seems so far away from God that it appears as if he or she can never come to Him? Don’t stop praying for that person. Ever.
Paul wrote a bunch of letters to different churches that were around in the decades after the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. Most of these letters, believe it or not, still exist (well, copies of copies of copies of them). One of these letters was written to the church in the very pagan city of Rome and is now known as the book of Romans.
In the early chapters of Romans, Paul shared a huge, sweeping summary of biblical history. Those words provide an essential key to God’s Word: don’t think of the Bible as this random collection of stories. It’s actually one big story with one main character. Each supporting actor and each smaller episode make much of God and carry the bigger plot forward.
Here’s a bit from early in Romans:
What may be known about God is plain to [all people], because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. (Rom. 1:19–20)
In other words, creation screams, “Creator!”
If you just look around yourself, you’ll see everything that is made had to have a maker. My iPhone screams that it was created. It didn’t just appear from nothing—someone made it. My car, my computer, the highway, the skyscraper … someone made them.
In the same way, our lives scream that someone made us.
Remember, when God created you, it wasn’t because He had a need. God created you and me and all people because He wanted to share what He already had—love. He created you in His image so you could live not out of a need to be loved by people but to share the love He gives.
So, Paul told us in Romans, people just know that they were made by a Creator. But what happened? Something went wrong.
They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator. (Rom. 1:25)
The truth about God is that He’s enough. The truth about God is that He’s all you need. The truth about God is that He is in control. Are you okay with those truths? Is that what you believe? Or are you exchanging those truths for lies? That He’s not enough, that you need more than He gives, or that He’s not really in control, not of your life.
Have you believed that you’re in control? That your life and present choices and future opportunities are all up to you?
Those Paul wrote of (just like us today) exchanged the truth about God for a lie and served created things rather than the Creator. Bad move.
And we’ve all made the same bad move at times in our lives. It wasn’t just Adam and Eve who sinned, and everyone who came after them has been perfect. Ha! Paul said that:
All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. (Rom. 3:23)
Wait, all of us? Even Grandma? Even the preacher at the pulpit on Sunday mornings? Even the Christian singer on the radio? Even great saints of the past? What about Mother Teresa? Surely she never sinned. What about Paul himself, who wrote this letter?
Yeah, sorry: all means all.
Everyone except Jesus who has walked, is walking, or will walk this earth has sinned or will sin.
If we could be sinless, we wouldn’t need a savior to take care of our little sin problem. But if all have sinned, then all of us need a savior.
In order to be in a relationship with a pure and holy God, guess what—you have to be perfect. There’s a perfect standard. But we all fall short. Everyone on this planet … we all have one thing in common: we all fall short of the glory of God, and we all need a Savior.
When I was in high school, I played the comparison game. I’d look at someone and think, At least my sin’s not that bad. I saw my sin as tiny compared to others. So guess how big I thought I needed Jesus to be in my life? Exactly.
We all fall short. We all sin. We all need a Savior.
That’s why Jesus did what He did:
But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Rom. 5:8)
I love that it doesn’t say, “But God said He loved us a lot.” No, God demonstrated His love. Talk is cheap. So many people say they love but don’t act like they love. “God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Why did Jesus have to die? I mean, it was such a brutal death, and everyone hates to see the innocent suffer.
Jesus had to die because if He didn’t, the “falling short” that all of us have done would’ve resulted in us being forever separated from God, even after death.
The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom. 6:23)
The result of—the payback for—our sin is death. That’s what our falling short earns us. One day, we will all die physically. But this refers also to spiritual death. What we earn from living our lives with sin is eternal separation from God.
But …
Do you see that word in the verse above? Yes, we’ve earned damnation forever … but … the story doesn’t end there. But God doesn’t leave us there in that condition. He created us, and we turned away, earning punishment, but He doesn’t even force us to pay that ultimate debt. He pays it Himself.
Where we should’ve gotten hellfire, He gives a gift.
Is that what you do? When someone makes you really angry, do you just go out and buy them a thoughtful little gift you know they’ll like? I don’t.
Why did Jesus have to die? Because He was the gift. His death was our death, which He took in our place. Our punishment, our payback for falling short, got put on Him, and then He was killed in our stead. But it didn’t end with His death: He defeated death and rose from the grave and lives forever at God’s side. Now, because He did that, you and I can receive the gift and stay eternally in His presence.
Really grasp that truth: what we’d earned was forever death, but what He gave us instead was forever life.
In order to be in a perfect relationship with a perfect God, you have to be perfect. We all fall short. And because the only one who lives up to God’s perfect standard is God, God sent Himself. Jesus—who alone was fully God and fully man—came to this earth, and He alone lived a perfect life, thereby earning a perfect relationship with the Father. We earned separation, but He didn’t give us what we’d earned.
And then He rose from the grave, proving two things: number one, He is God, and number two, He has the power to make dead things live.
In every religion, there is a ladder to God or some kind of paradise. A stairway to heaven. Every faith system on the planet—including Christianity—has instructions and steps for how you can obtain the ultimate pinnacle, be it eternal life, release from the cycle of rebirth, or whatever else. All of them teach you how to take steps toward that goal.
In all cases but one, the emphasis is on what the person does to climb that staircase. Follow the Five Pillars of Islam or the Noble Eightfold Path of Buddhism or the Ten Commandments of Judaism or escape from the Samsara cycle of Hinduism, and you will obtain your goal. Maybe.
The difference between all other world religions and Christianity is that in Christianity, the person doesn’t climb up the staircase to be saved for eternity and reach God. In Christianity, God climbs down the stairway to take people back up with Him.
The gods of all other religions sit at the top of a mountain, so to speak, waiting to see if anyone can be good enough to scale the cliffs and mount the summit. The God of Christianity left the mountaintop, came all the way down to the lowest depths of earth to get us, put us all on His back—any who would take His offer—and brought us up to the summit Himself.
There’s still a ladder. But because God knew that you and I could never climb up to His perfect standard—because we all have sinned and fallen short—Jesus climbed down the ladder to be with us. Because you and I couldn’t get there on our own merits and efforts.
I can’t get to perfection. Jesus came to earth and lived a perfect life, the only thing that allows for a perfect relationship with God. That means, humanly speaking, He had earned heaven. He’s the only one in the history of the world who actually did that. But He didn’t come here to take His earnings and run. He’d already had heaven before coming here. No, He came with a mission, and the first part of that mission was to live a life that earned heaven.
Jesus takes that which He deserved, eternal life, and offers an invitation for you to exchange it for what you deserve, which is God’s wrath.
Sometimes, even in Christianity, we lose sight of this simple, perfect swap. Sometimes we think Jesus’s sacrifice and substitution for us is great and all, but it’s only a start, and if we really want to get to heaven, we’ll do more stuff on top of it. If you’ll only read your Bible enough. If you’ll only go to church enough. If you’ll only become a missionary. And then, oops, you really blew it that one day—so now you’re knocked down a few rungs on the ladder. Just buckle down and try harder and maybe one day you’ll get God to let you into heaven.
Bah! That’s turning Christianity into Buddhism! Or into some other world religion that isn’t Christianity. Christianity isn’t about how many times you’ve been to church or how good you are or how many Bible verses you’ve memorized. Christianity is about a free gift offered to you by a God who climbed down the ladder to take you up to where you could never get on your own.
That’s the big story of God, and now you see how He is the main character.
But if you’re like most Christians in America, you’ve heard a slightly different message. You’ve been taught or led to understand that simple faith in Jesus’s great exchange is fine and all, but what really counts is going to Bible college or leading people to pray the prayer of salvation or having a daily quiet time.
It’s crazy, people adding stuff to Christianity to make it seem harder than it is. That silliness is what led C. S. Lewis to write this passage in his book The Screwtape Letters, in which a greater demon gives a lesser demon instructions on how to mess up a Christian’s life:
What we want, if men become Christians at all, is to keep them in the state of mind I call “Christianity And.” You know—Christianity and the Crisis, Christianity and the New Psychology, Christianity and the New Order, Christianity and Faith Healing, Christianity and Psychical Research, Christianity and Vegetarianism, Christianity and Spelling Reform.*
Christianity and spelling reform—I love it.
Right, that’s how many of us are led to believe we have to climb the ol’ stairway to heaven. We have to add church attendance to our salvation, and then we’ll be considered Christian. The problem is that once we begin allowing people to tell us there’s something else beyond our simple faith that we have to do to be saved, we have no way of saying no. If Person A’s additional thing (say, faith plus church attendance) is right and binding on us, then who’s to say that Person B’s thing (faith plus Bible memorization, for example) isn’t binding too? Then Persons C through ZZZ come along adding their hoops to jump through, and pretty soon Christianity has become nothing but constant hoop-jumping.
Know what I mean?
You’ve tried it, haven’t you? I need to pray more. I need to read my Bible more. I need to confess more. I need to give more. I need to volunteer more. If only you do this, and if you do it perfectly, and then if you do this other thing, and then one more thing, all perfectly, then maybe you can get to God and be used by Him. The problem is that the ladder to God is infinite.
Aren’t you tired of it?
Ditch the climbing and take the free gift instead.
There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. (Rom. 8:1)
If you put your faith and trust in Jesus, you can know this: when God the Father looks down on you, He doesn’t see you, with all your inability to live sinlessly—He sees Christ. The Christian is in Christ Jesus, and God lavishes all His love and treasure on Jesus and anyone in Him. When He looks at us now, He says, “Blameless! Holy! Cleansed!”
I don’t know about you, but when I look at my own past, I wouldn’t use those words. But when God the Father looks at you and you step into a life of following Christ, suddenly, there is no condemnation.
You can be forgiven. Yes, even you. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done. There’s nothing you have done or could do that would make Him love you any less. His love bucket for you is filled to the top and sloshing out, and there’s a hose running into it, keeping it overflowing. And there’s nothing you can do about it.
There’s no more love to gain. There’s no leak in the bucket that makes you have to keep topping it off by doing good deeds. There is no condemnation. Think about that.
What’s the only correct response to such generosity? To fall down and accept it with great gratitude.
The only rung we have to worry about to attain salvation from Christ is the bottom one. We simply step down off it and say, “Yes, Lord; thank You. I’ll receive what You’re offering.”
If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. As Scripture says, “Anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame.” (Rom. 10:9–11)
I love that last line: “Anyone who believes [trusts] in him will never be put to shame.”
That, my friend, is the good news I needed that day when Nanny lay in the hospital.
By the way, Nanny did, in fact, walk down the aisle at my wedding. She recovered enough to be in the ceremony, which was in December. She had to have two guys escort her down. When she drew close to me in the aisle, she winked … boasting that I had only one man that day but she had two.
That’s the gospel, then: simple faith in the God who climbed down the ladder because you and I couldn’t climb up it. Not Christianity and anything—just faith alone.
I wanted the high schoolers I worked with at that Christian camp to truly understand this. So we tried something crazy.
We would gather all the female students outside in front of a large fire in the evening. We’d flick on these big floodlights, and we’d say, “What if we told you that all these things—sin, shame, guilt, fear, anxiety, and every other sin—could be gone? Would you girls be interested in that?”
The high schoolers were always highly skeptical. What’s a camp counselor going to do to take away some of the worst plagues of their lives?
We’d designate one of the counselors to represent God. That God character would say, “There are two rules in this activity. Number one: be all in. Don’t hide. Bring everything before me. How can I clean out anything you don’t bring before me? And number two: you don’t have to listen to anyone else but me.”
Then the God character would leave, and we’d hand out white T-shirts and black Sharpie pens. The campers would put the shirts on and partner up. Then we’d announce the next part of the activity.
“In order for us to get rid of sin,” we’d say, “we need to know what it is. Remember, sin is any thought, word, deed, or attitude that goes against God’s perfect standard. Turn to your partner and take turns confessing your sins to each other. As you confess your sin, your partner is going to write it on your white T-shirt, and then you’ll flip-flop. Okay, you guys do that, and we’ll be back in a minute.” Then the counselors and I would leave.
So we’d hide in the bushes and just watch. First, the girls would look around with they-can’t-be-serious grins. Finally, a few girls would begin. The girls always started with “safe sins.” It’s odd how we justify sin and assign levels and degrees to it. They’d start with something like, “I lied once.” The other person would write “LIAR” on the shirt. (It’s always easier to talk about other people’s sins, isn’t it?) After a few safe ones, they’d run out of ideas, so they’d look at the other shirts around them, and they’d say, “Ooh, I did that one too,” and they’d write it.
After a couple of minutes, we’d step forward again. “Stop hiding, girls! Rule number one: be all in. Stop going halfway. If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always had. Let’s do it; be brave.”
This time, we’d leave them for ten minutes. This time when we came back, I could tell from their posture and tone, even without reading their shirts, that they had stopped hiding. We shut off the floodlights and asked, “How do you feel, now that no one can read your shirt?”
“Better!”
We’d turn the lights back on. “How do you feel now?”
“Terrible. Ashamed.”
“I understand. But remember, we told you we would make this all go away. So raise your hand if you have baggage. Maybe it’s emotional baggage. Maybe it’s guilt baggage. Maybe it’s sexual baggage. Anyone?”
Hands would go up all around the group. We’d send volunteers out into the crowd and give a backpack filled with rocks to everyone with a hand up.
We’d continue. “All right, who looks in the mirror and thinks, ‘That’s not good enough’? You know that God says you are valuable, but you and the mirror disagree with Him. Anyone?”
Hands would go up. So we’d hand out mirrors that were shattered.
“All right,” we’d say, “who’s a slave to people-pleasing? At the expense of pleasing God, you’d rather please people?”
Hands went up, and we’d literally tie their hands with chains.
Can you picture an outdoor clearing filled with high school students chained up, holding broken mirrors, and schlepping rock-filled backpacks?
“It is so draining, isn’t it?” I’d say.
“Yeah!”
“Do you want to get rid of it all?”
“Yeah!”
“Do you really want to get rid of it?”
And they’d shout, “Yeah!”
I’d point at this epic dirt hill we were gathered at the base of. “If you want to get rid of all that weight you’re carrying … run up that hill!”
They’d groan but start up the hill. The other counselors and I would line the trail and cheer them on, and up they’d go.
At this point, the God character would reappear. I wouldn’t say anything about that character, and he wouldn’t speak either. But it was amazing to me that nobody remembered rule number two.
There they were, losing in a big game of Simon Says—because God hadn’t told them to carry the rocks or accept the mirror or the chains, and God certainly hadn’t told them they could work those things off by this giant effort. They listened to someone else, breaking rule two, and very quickly they started paying the price.
As they all ran by, first up and then down, then back up again, the other counselors and I (but not the God character) would yell things at them to keep them going.
“Run harder! Save yourself! You can fix your sin if you just try harder. Run up that hill; run up that big stairway to heaven—you’re going to get there. I know it’s infinitely long, but you can do it! Run harder! Don’t stop!”
At first, all those high school girls ran with determination. “I can do it.”
And we’d yell, “Just beat that girl! Run faster than her. Make sure you’re more impressive than her. Make sure you have more followers. It’s not about the team—it’s about being the best one on it. Yes, be a friend and help someone, but don’t let her beat you!”
Before long, they’d have dirt on their faces and in the creases of their eyes. Every time they’d get to the top, we’d yell at them to run back down, and every time they’d get to the bottom, we’d yell at them to start back up.
And all the time, the God character would just watch them run.
I’d yell, “Hey, stop slacking. This time, run like you care.”
“We thought we were,” they’d say, “but okay.”
“Run back! What are you doing? Run harder! Move faster! Do more! Read your Bible more! Care more! Be more impressive. You can fix your sin! Just be a little bit better.”
How long do you think they would do it? Two minutes? Ten minutes? Most of them would go at least fifteen minutes, and all the while we were shouting, “Come on, just try harder. Just try harder. Just try harder. Just be better. You can make your way to Jesus.”
It’s silly, isn’t it? Why would anyone agree to do something like that when they didn’t have to? And did the mirrors or chains or backpacks full of rocks go away just by them running up and down that hill? Of course not. What made them think that working harder would cause their load to feel less heavy?
Yet that’s how I used to be with God. That’s how so, so many young people—and adults—are today. They’ve listened to some other voice that has told them they can climb their way to God if they just do these hard things.
That’s not Christianity, my friend. That’s Budd-Jude-Hind-Slam or something, but it’s not Christianity.
Where can you run to fix yourself? What hill can you climb that is high enough to pay for your sins? What pack is heavy enough to take away your guilt?
Do you dislike thinking about this? I’ve found that some people go to great lengths to avoid looking too closely at what they’re doing in life. They distract themselves with friends and activities and relationships and school and work and whatever else. Because they’d rather be distracted than depressed. They’d rather be apathetic than fail.
Don’t be afraid to focus on this. If you’re lugging around a backpack of rocks and carrying chains and broken mirrors, wouldn’t you rather get rid of them and be free? Because that big hill is a metaphor for life. So many people are running up and down trying to beat everyone yet ironically going nowhere and accomplishing nothing that lasts.
At our camp, we did this activity for ten weeks and with hundreds of students. One moment with one young girl stood out, probably because watching her was like lifting a mirror to myself. This young girl ran really fast. She beat everybody up and down the hill, and I could tell she took pride in her ability. As she ran by the God character, He stopped her right in the middle of the trail.
“Why are you running?” he asked.
“I can do this!” she said, and I saw she believed it. Maybe she just meant she could beat everyone and win whatever prize we might be offering to the winner, or maybe she was thinking metaphorically too, like she believed her own efforts could win her some relief from her burdens and from the sins written on her white T-shirt.
“God” let the girl go back to running. Everyone continued hurrying right past him. I always found that interesting, and probably very symbolic. Am I running past God too? Am I so busy doing stuff for Him that I ignore Him?
So the God character stood there, being passed by these young people huffing and puffing, and he’d whisper, “Why are you running?” Most people wouldn’t be listening, so they’d trudge by without even knowing he’d said something. Ouch, right? Are we listening? Do we even expect that God might say something to us?
Once, this one fast girl came by, and the God character whispered, “Why are you running, and where is it getting you?”
She paused. “Well, they told us to run.”
“Who did? Me?”
“No, not you. The other ones. The ones in charge.”
The God character nodded. “Where is it getting you?”
“Up and down, up and down,” she said. “I’m really tired.”
“I’m sure you are. Do you know why I sent My Son, Jesus?”
“Sure,” she said, spouting something off from memory. “You sent Your Son to die on the cross for my sins.”
“Which sins?”
She smiled. “The sins of the world!”
He leaned in close. “Which sins, my girl?”
Then it was as if a light went on in this girl’s mind. Suddenly, she got it. She’d believed all the right things her whole life, but it had never made it from her head to her life. She had made Christianity about nothing but what she did for God, not what God has done for her.
The essence of your faith is not how hard you try. That’s any religion except Christianity. The essence of Christianity is that, because you couldn’t achieve, Jesus achieved on your behalf. And your goal, your part, your response is to put your faith and trust in His cross, in His sacrifice, and in His resurrection.
Yes, that’s right: you can stop running to achieve what Jesus has already accomplished.
Right there on the dirt trail, as sweaty people jostled past her, she slid that backpack off and dropped her rocks. She took the chains off and let them fall to the ground. She set that broken mirror at the feet of “God.”
And then, with a look of relief and purpose, she turned to those around her. “Everyone,” she yelled, “stop running!”
She got it.
But we had to keep playing our part as distractions and false voices, so we shushed her. “Quiet, girl!”
That made her yell all the more. “The world—those people—they lied to you!”
“Shh, you’re giving it away.”
“They’re liars! You can’t fix yourself! Stop running!” She started grabbing people’s chains and trying to pull them off.
But the girls running by resisted her. They held tight to their chains. Why? Because they were more comfortable with their chains. Because it was what they were used to.
“You don’t have to carry them!” It was amazing, watching her. She was this tiny little thing, but she was on fire. “You don’t have to! Jesus carried the chains and demolished their locks. You can stop running! You can’t fix yourself. The world lied when it said it’s all about being the best and getting to the top, being more impressive, having more followers, more likes. The world lied to you.”
She quit trying to pull their chains away and instead just started grabbing whole people and dragging them to “God.” She no longer tried to fix them herself—she didn’t have that ability. But she could bring them to the one who could.
That’s the life of a Christian. It’s not about what you can do for Christ but about what He’s already done for you. It’s not about hauling your own sin around and trying to work it off; it’s about walking in freedom in response because it’s already off and then bringing other people to Jesus who still haven’t heard (or believed) this really good news. Jesus made it all possible for you to be a part of what He is up to in the world. Responding to what Jesus has accomplished is your part.
Why are you running? Where is it getting you? Do you know why He sent His Son? Are you carrying things around that God never asked you to carry? Are you bearing the marks of your sin though Jesus has already wiped them away? Step into your part of the story as you let go and let God play His.
As I mentioned, Nanny recovered from her stroke and was able to walk down the aisle at my wedding. As I entered married life, I decided I wanted to start hanging out with Nanny on Tuesdays.
We had a delightful time together every Tuesday, enjoying Diet Sprite and cinnamon-sugar toast and jokes about which sport she had been playing that broke her nails this time and otherwise cutting up.
But one Tuesday, four months after the wedding, I came into her room and found her crying. “Nanny, what’s wrong?”
“Oh, Megan,” she said, “I thought I was living for your wedding. I thought I’d been allowed to recover so I might participate in your lovely ceremony, and then I would go. But it’s been months now, my dear, and here I remain. Why am I still alive?”
“Nanny, I—”
“Think about my life, Megan. I am confined to a wheelchair. I sit in this chair all day, and I wait for people to love me.”
An image came into my mind of my dear, blessed Nanny sitting there in that chair with her cup held outward for others to fill. It had never occurred to me that she might not have learned the thing I was just coming to understand for myself.
“Nanny,” I said, feeling as nervous as I can ever remember feeling, “do you know God?”
She sniffed. “Yeah.”
“Okay,” I said, “do you know why He sent Jesus?”
And she said, “Now that one confuses me, because He’s God, but then He was a man, and I’m not really sure why He went ahead and died if He’s God.”
There it was: my opportunity. I shot a prayer upward, ran to my car, grabbed my Bible with those verses written in red in the back, hurried back, and plunged ahead. “Nanny, can I tell you a story?”
She blew her nose and nodded.
“There’s a God, Nanny. A perfect God who loves you perfectly. He wants to have a perfect relationship with you, but there’s a problem: we all fall short because of this thing called sin. Do you know what sin is?”
“Do you mean the fact that I’m really selfish?”
I smiled. “That’s right, Nanny.”
“I always feel guilty for that.”
“Me too, Nanny. But that’s where God butts into the story. He sent His Son, Jesus, who lived the perfect life you couldn’t live and died the death you deserved and rose from the dead, proving He’s more powerful than sin, its effects, and even death itself. If you put your faith and trust in Jesus’s sacrifice, instead of your own abilities to try to be good enough for heaven, you can be saved. For if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, Nanny, you will be saved.” I looked at my grandmother. “Nanny, do you believe this?”
“Yes,” she said with tears streaming down her face. “What do I do?”
My nervousness flared up again. I stand in front of large audiences and give this presentation often, and yet in front of Nanny, my heart was going nuts. “We can pray,” I finally managed to say.
“Wait!” she said.
But I didn’t want to wait. God’s timing was right then. “What is it, Nanny?”
She looked worried. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Just be honest.”
She closed her eyes and said the most beautiful prayer I’d ever heard: “God, I’m really selfish. And now I know that’s why You sent Your Son, who died, and because of that, God, help me not to wait to be loved but to love others first, because I know I’m already loved. Help me. Amen.”
Five years later, Nanny passed away. Just ten days shy of her one-hundredth birthday. We all wanted her to live to be one hundred because we thought that would be cool. But she always said, “I don’t want to be one hundred—because that’s old.”
I miss her, believe me. But I have confidence that she’s with Jesus, waiting for me. Probably trying to serve Him Diet Sprite and cinnamon-sugar toast. I don’t know if that really was the first time she’d ever made a faith decision or if she’d made one at a young age and had just forgotten her part of the story. But what an opportunity I had with Nanny.
That same opportunity is before you right now.
If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. As Scripture says, “Anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame.” (Rom. 10:9–11)
Have you ever put your faith and trust in Jesus and His sacrifice? Or did you give your life to Jesus awhile ago but have gotten caught up running again? Have you been living as lord of your life and now you’re tired? Maybe you have been running aimlessly up and down that hill (called life) and you’re exhausted, and you thought maybe you could get there, maybe you could fix yourself, maybe you could find a way to climb the endless ladder to a better relationship with God on your own. And if you couldn’t get there, maybe you’ve felt okay if you could just get a little higher than the people around you.
Run to Jesus, my friend, and talk honestly with Him about where you’ve been and where you are, just like Nanny did. Whether you want to surrender your life for the first time or pause from running in order to encounter Jesus again, don’t wait a second longer. Talk to Him. Then I’d recommend having a conversation with someone you trust about how to further respond to Jesus’s invitation.
Imagine putting this book down and loving others not because they deserve it but because you finally realize you never did and never could. That’s grace. That’s love. That’s the greatest story ever written, and it’s still being written … through us.
But perhaps you’re like my students that day in class, and you’ve known Jesus all your life, but you don’t really understand how to live out that love in response. Maybe, up to now, you’ve missed a big portion of your part in God’s story because you’ve been distracted in the midst of running. God invites you to encounter Him! Today, right now, you’re invited to play your part by continually encountering Him so that grace and love and mercy can overflow from you into the lives of other people you see running. Your part of God’s story, living in response to what Jesus has done, is ready to be lived.
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Rom. 12:1–2)
This is our part: offering ourselves to Him, walking in freedom and hope and joy ourselves, grabbing people around us who haven’t learned the secret yet, and bringing them to Jesus. You may still exert some energy—you may even run—but you’ll do so with purpose and in love and in the knowledge that you’re not running to work off your guilt or sin or debt, but you’re running to bring the good news of freedom to others in response to Jesus’s defeat of your guilt and sin and debt.
Still, you are not the main character of this universal story—God is. But the story definitely involves you. That’s why Jesus came: to invite you to be a part of what He is doing and how He is redeeming the world. If you want to be part of God’s story, you have to first come to Him in faith. And once you’re found in Him, others will find Him in you.
* C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Uhrichsville, IL: Barbour and Company, 1990), 126.