God Isn't Grading You

Sometimes we treat our relationship with God like a report card; trying to earn His approval through doing all the "right" things. But what if we've misunderstood His heart all along?

Today we're looking at a parable that reminds us that God isn't impressed by appearances or performances. He's after something much deeper: our hearts.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:17

You are welcome here. Lay your burdens down. Lay your words down. There is room for you. There is great for you.

SPEAKER_03 1:40

This is a place where we slow down, where we open God's word, and where we have honest conversations about real life. Because if you're taking a look outside, honey, it's treacherous. It's too hot for all of this, but we we digress. We keep going. Okay. If you've ever felt like you weren't Christian enough or you've looked around and thought everyone else seems to have this um, what do they call this whole faith thing figured out? Today's conversation is especially for you and me too, because I'm in the same boat. I don't want anybody to take this as I'm looking down on you or I'm the teacher at the phone room and we're all students here, okay? We're all students. So grab your Bible, get real comfortable, get your favorite blanket. If you're a tea drinker, go ahead and season it how you like with a little honey and a little lemon, and let's spend a little time with Jesus together. Now, I do want to give a quick disclaimer, as I will do for every episode. So if you get tired of hearing it, just go ahead and fast forward. But before we jump in, I always want to remind you that everything I share comes from my personal study, my personal time with God, and understanding of the scripture. I am not perfect, I don't know it front to back, cover to cover. I don't claim to know everything, and I never want my words to replace your own time with God. So I'm always going to advocate for you reading the scripture for yourself, knowing it for yourself, and going to God on your own behalf. But my prayer today is that our conversation encourages you to open your Bible to study God's word and allow the Holy Spirit to guide your understanding. Now, let's get started with Let's Get Honest. That's the name of I'm gonna try to outline this. So if you want to skip around, you can kind of click that part or whatever. It's a it's a um process, y'all. We're working on it, we're working. So, this first uh thing that we're gonna get into is gonna be just our conversation started, and I just want us to be honest just for a little quick second. Um, let me see here. Have you ever walked into a church here, far, wherever? Have you ever walked into a church or even just open social media these days and immediately felt like everyone else has this perfect relationship with God except you? Like they got it down, Pat. Like everybody's got their Bible, they're singing on key, they're worshiping right, or whatever right is. They know exactly what to pray, they know what to say, when to say it, when to lift their hands, when to say amen. And you're just over there wondering, like, ooh, when do I stand up again? Because I have been there, I have been there, and it's like, okay, I'm just in the midst, just to be in the room is enough, I guess. I just be in the room, y'all. I'm like, hallelujah. Yes, I'm in here with y'all. That's what I'm talking about. Something's gonna come this way if I don't get it. That's all right, though. But I've definitely had those moments like that. And if we're being real, real, real honest, social media does not help. Everything is an aesthetic now. Everybody seems to have this perfect Bible aesthetic. The fact that that's even a thing now is crazy. But their journals are color-coded and highlighted, and they got the nice Bible covers and no T no Shade. If you got that, you go, girl. Organizational key. Because I definitely got like my little Bible pens. I have like my little cute little pastel highlighters. But you know, those journals, they're color-coded, the coffee is steaming, their morning routine starts at 5 a.m. Kudos to all of y'all. I'm still catching my my Z, but some mornings I literally just try to remember like what do I have to do the next day? Yes, I do good enough just to do that, but that's exactly why I love today's story, which is the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. But we're gonna get into that going to Luke chapter 18, verse 9 through 14. And I highly recommend if you want more understanding or if you want just a little bit more clarity, I would definitely recommend that AMP or the amplified version of the Bible. So if you use the Bible app, just look for AMP, and that to me is a nice um descriptive, excuse me, a nice descriptive version of the Bible. If you want that extra understanding or you like things broken down to you in context, that's the way to go. So, once again, that is Luke chapter 18, verse 9, and we're gonna go all the way through 14. And I'm just gonna read it verbatim, just in case you don't have your Bible with you right now, you're not able to open it. Still go back and look, Miss Ma'am, okay? All right, so verse 9 starts with I'm gonna read it in the new international version, but I do recommend AMP. But the one thing about AMP, y'all, is it's very long. So I ain't trying to keep y'all all day all day, sorry. But verse nine starts with to some who were confident of their own righteousness and look down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable. Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed, God, I thank you that I am not like other people, robbers, evildoers, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and I give a tenth of all I get. But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, God, have mercy on me, a sinner. I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. Now, we're just gonna modernize this a little bit just for y'all's understanding. Jesus is gonna tell us about these two people walking into the temple to pray. That's what we just read. Now, imagine these for our sake are two women walking into church today. You pick a church, any church. One's gonna walk in wearing her Sunday best, Bible in one hand, journal in the other. She's dressed to head to toe, bedazzle, everything. You see her coming from the parking lot. She knows all the worship songs, serves on three ministry teams, and everybody knows her name. And you probably got a person in mind right now. Don't tell nobody, girl, keep that to yourself. But the other woman almost doesn't come. She's carrying shame. She feels like she's messed up one too many times. She's convinced everyone can see every mistake she's ever made. But they both pray. But here's the thing where Jesus flips this whole story. The first person basically says, God, thank you. I'm not like everybody else. I don't do what they do, I don't hang with those people, I don't hang with that crowd. Ugh. But imagine that prayer being out loud. That's bold. That is a lot of audacity. And we all know some people in church who got a lot of audacity. But meanwhile, the tax collector, this other lady, she can't even look up. She she can't even raise her head to even just give that much. And this lady, you know, she's beating herself up, the one that's all uppity and whoopty, whatever. She's beating her chest, and they simply say, Go be merciful to me. God, sorry, be merciful to me, a sinner. And Jesus says, That's the one who goes home right with God. Now, I'm gonna get my handy dandy notebook because I did read a little bit more into this scripture, and I want it to get clearly so I could present it better. So, in this context, justified means being cleared of sin or declared right by God. So, where it says that on verse 14, I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. That is the context in which that is being used, and um, also, um, I don't know if it's in this version, but if you read the A and P version, it might say contempt in there, and contempt means a strong dislike or deep disrespect for someone treating them worthless. This is what the Pharisee was doing to the tax collector. They just looked at them like, Oh, who are you? Why are you here? Like, look how you look, look how you act, da da da da. That's exactly how they were treating that person in contempt. And exalted, as it's stated, when it says, for all those who exalt themselves will be humble, means to raise someone or something to a higher rank or praise them very much. And I just want to clarify those words, just in case you didn't understand, like, oh, what does that mean in this context? That's exactly what that means, and also I'm gonna give you guys two more scriptures that I think also support our um topic for today. One of them is James 4, 6, and that says, God is opposed to the proud and haughty, but gives grace to the humble. And then the next one is 1 Samuel chapter 16, verse 7, where it says, For the Lord sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. And you might be asking yourself, What does that have to do with me? What does that have to do with us? Well, my first point is that sometimes we're more concerned with looking looking spiritually healthy rather than being spiritually honest. We want to put on for people, we want to put on for our friends, we want to put on maybe for our parents or our spouses or people close to us or even the other church people, because you don't want to look like the outsider, you don't want to look like the person that's gonna get shunned or anything like that. Because believe me, I've been there. Anybody who knows me, I have piercings, I don't have tattoos, but I have physical things about me that I worry sometimes people might look at me crazy, like, oh, well, why are you doing all that, but you're in a church? Or why are you doing all that, but you you pray and you know God and things like that. And I think at some times I have been more concerned about my outwardly appearance. Not saying that I was thinking people would judge me for it, but I did think it would be the first thing that people looked at me and they made a lot of assumptions, and they just made a lot of ideals about me without even knowing me, without even having to open my mouth. And I can imagine if that's how I feel, I can only imagine how somebody else feels if they were in that same boat where we're not even being honest with ourselves, but we're so worried about how it looks to other people that we might tell ourselves whatever we want to hear or whatever we don't even understand. But um, that leads me to my next point that God is not impressed by performance, He's after a relationship with us. We feel like we gotta check off all these boxes when we go to church, we gotta check off all these boxes when we go to Bible study, we gotta check off all these boxes when we pray, we gotta wake up and do all of these things, we gotta check off all these boxes Monday through Sunday. I want us all to touch grass when I say this, but God is not doing attendance. I really want us all to just take that in real quick. I don't know where it got so bad that I feel like society makes it so adamant in our head that you have to do the most or it doesn't count at all. You have to be fully committed to everything that's happening in a church, or you're not doing right at all. And I just don't understand how did we get here? No Deborah Cox. But like, how did we get to this point where we feel like we have the right to tell somebody that you have to be here every Sunday for it to count? You have to come to every Bible study for it to count, you have to do something in this church for it to count. It's no longer about the relationship, it's about do I see you doing something? Does man see you being involved? Does man see you contributing to the church, to the four walls of a building? It's it's like they don't care as much about that. They want you here, present. And then when you hear, okay, then that's gonna help the relationship with God. And it's it's just not like that, it's just not realistic. But um, for my next point, it's basically that comparison doesn't just happen with our churches or our relationships or our careers, it's everywhere, it's everywhere, it's in the church where we are so busy looking at the best dress, and we're so looking at who's giving the most money, and we're so busy looking at who's coming the most times. It's like, are you here for yourself or are you here for somebody else? Are you here for your time with God or are you here to see who else is here? Because that time is worship, that time is for you and the Lord. But I feel like everybody is so busy watching the other side, so busy watching the other side that you just forget about why you're even there. You forget why you're even there, and uh a part of me is thinking like with this Pharisee, like they were so focused on why that tax collector was there looking how they were looking. Did you even go to God for yourself? What did you come here for? What did you come here for, Mr. Pharisee? Because you're so worried about that tax collector that was minding their business, didn't even say, Hey, how you doing? Ain't seen you in a while, what's up? But you came in worried about the tax collector when you was here when you were supposed to be coming here on behalf of yourself with that with that time with God on your mind, and it wasn't, it was more so worried about somebody else. And you know what I really think is funny for real is sometimes that we'll spend 15 minutes trying to sound so deep, especially when it comes to praying. We'll spend so many, so many, so many times being like, Jesus, you know my heart. I don't even want to mimic prayer because I don't even want to do God like that, but you know what I'm talking about. You may have a church member that do it, you may have done it a couple times, but we will literally spend 15 minutes trying to dig deeper in our hearts and our souls, and meanwhile, God is probably like, girl, you could have just told me what was going on. I see all, I know all. You didn't have to start from last week. You didn't have to start from last week, Miss Ma'am. And honestly, I think that's where the freedom starts. We gotta free ourselves, we gotta take our shackles off so we can dance. And I just want to just do a little quick heart check. I want you to ask yourself, have I been performing my faith? And really like sit with that. Have you been performing your faith? Also, I want you to ask yourself, am I trying to impress people more than I'm pursuing God? That's a deep one. I really, I really want to just take a take a second and just let you think about that. Are you trying to impress people more than you're pursuing God? Yeah, we're gonna be quiet on the second, just for you. The last thing I want us to just consider in this heart check is if Jesus told this story today, which person would I resemble? Would you resemble that Pharisee who had contempt and was looking at that other person in the temple and thinking, oh God, thank God I'm not like them. I'm not like these robbers, I'm not like these evildoers, I'm not like these adulterers. And you can fill in the blank whatever you want, because you know in modern day times we got titles for everything. There's that person, there's somebody you're thinking of that, oh, I'm not like them, I'm not in the streets, I'm not doing what she's doing, I'm not doing what he's doing. I could be worse off like so-and-so. You know, we got them people that come to mind that we think, oh man, they're the tax collector in my life, and I'm the Pharisee. We got those people. So just ask yourself if Jesus told this story today, which person would you resemble? And just to bring this episode down a little bit, not to a close just yet, but just bringing it together, I want us all to remember that God is not looking for polished prayers, he's looking for honesty, he's looking for your heart, he's looking for everything that you want him to see. And I I really want us all to remember that God already knows, even if you don't have the words, even if you don't have the words in that moment, he's looking for your honesty in your heart. Even if it's just God, I am tired. God, I don't have the answers. God, I need your guidance right now. I feel hopeless. That's one thing I am good for. I'm good for owning my rawest emotions in prayer with God because that's someone I feel like if I can't go to God as openly as I know I need to be, then who else can I? That's somebody that I feel like I can pull back that curtain and I can be as honest as I need to because I know God doesn't have any expectations of me. And I feel like the more you go to God in prayer, that prayer life will become more comfortable with you. It definitely will. And it might feel strange at first, it definitely will. Like, oh, I'm gonna tell God on my business. Girl, when you get through the habit of knowing he already knows it, you ain't really got nothing to hide. It's like, okay, you don't want to tell him about that little boo thing he was seeing. You know, you don't want to tell him that you met somebody new. You ain't wanna tell him that you, you know, you was talking to old dude again, and you know, y'all trying to work it out, and y'all took the trip, he flew you out, you know. You don't want to tell God about that, but I promise you, he already knows. You don't want to tell God, God, I'm about to quit the job. You might not want to tell God, God, these people don't even know, but I'm leaving tomorrow, I quit. Or you just you know, this could be anything, but just know that God already knows you don't have to go to him perfect, you don't have to go to him in fear of that judgment. Because there's some things that I've even been through that I'm like, man, I don't know if God did want to hear that. There's some things that have been in my heart that I'm like, I don't know, that's too that might be too heavy for God. These feelings that I'm feeling about this person, these feelings that I'm feeling about this guy, the way these feelings are about myself, what's going on in my life, like, oh, here I go again, God. I knew I wasn't supposed to be over there, but see what had happened was, and then I feel like I gotta explain to God because you know, I just want to give context. That's all I just want to get context. But just remember that God is not looking for polished prayers. And I also want you to hold on to the 14. Verse, that very last verse, saying, For everyone who exalts him will be humble, but he who humbles himself will be exalted, and that is in the amplified version. I highly suggest that version for anybody who wants a deeper understanding or wants some more context and just description of like what it means. I feel like it's very good for that. So this week I want you to pray just one completely honest prayer. Take your time, take a deep breath. You don't even have to rush. I feel like prayers have become so performing. Sit with God as if He was sitting beside you on the couch. You don't have to use no fancy words, you don't have to do what you saw the deacons do last Sunday or what you heard so-and-so doing on social media. Just be honest. Just be honest. And if you've ever thought that you had the heart to just clean yourself up before coming to God, this is your reminder that Jesus has always welcomed honest people. The tax collector didn't walk away because he had the better resume. He walked away because he came with a softer heart. He word the softer heart. So do not walk away until you feel good enough. Or I'm sorry, don't wait until you feel good enough. Don't walk away. Don't walk away. There's a song I don't think of it right now, but I'm gonna think of it. Don't don't oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. I'm tongue-tired. Do not walk away. Oh my god, I did it again, y'all. Try to tell my heart now in my head. Whatever they say. Don't wait until you feel good enough to go to God. Lord have mercy. Do not wait until you feel good enough to go to God. Go to Him exactly as you are. Even if your hair ain't done, you need a pedicure, your clothes has all been out of shape, you're tired off of work, even in your work clothes. Go to God exactly as you are. I promise he is ready and willing with open arms. He is not surprised by your story. Hello, somebody. He is not surprised by your story, and he's certainly not finished writing it. Can I get an Amen? I didn't hear you. Can I get an Amen again? Alright, amen. Thank you so much for spending time with me today. I hope you guys enjoyed this. I feel like I got the jitters off of me. I did a practice run a couple days ago. I feel like I'm finding my groove again. But if this episode encouraged you, don't let the conversation end here. This week's devotional will be inspired by this same story in almost like a similar theme kind of way. And I'll also be posting some things on my Patreon coming up. So stay tuned for that. And that'll also just help you spend more time with this passage and let God's word sink a little deeper into your heart. Until next time, stay rooted in God's word. Give yourself grace. Keep choosing Jesus one day at a time. And I will meet you back here soon.

SPEAKER_00 25:23

Hey, I'm just so heavy on save. Now I got brains. Face. Right in his image I made. So it you I finna remain. I sit at the proof. It's ever me thing, God. When they didn't think I do it, I knew it was movin'. Earth, you wanna be ruling. I know that was amazing. God I'm giving you praises. We love the real thing. I'ma keep praising your name. I don't care what these people gon' do, what these people gon' say, what these people gon' bang. We out here making deciphers. We in the world where we can't be the same. Okay. So I wait for my hand on the Bible, speaking the truth, and we makin it plain. We finna pop it, lock it, stop it, pop it. Walkin' with Godin', we not finna change. Hillin your word and I can't be afraid. Did it we craft and we makin it change? We did it, we did it, we own it, we got it. Fake like a seat, I just need me a green. He back on the scene and he healin' the pain. Father, I love how you makin it so. When they think I do it. I knew you was movin'. Make it for honey with the girl all these things. I'ma keep making the same. I'ma go right with the candle. I'ma taste in a thing. We don't want to bring me a dream. Look how we pick on the phone. Hey, you put the thing we all bitch is before everything.