The Hearing God Podcast
Anthony Moore and Dan Lamos have met for coffee every week for over a decade. You're invited to listen in on their conversation on The Hearing God Podcast. Explore the prophetic, mystical, and heart-centered aspects of a life filled with the Holy Spirit. Each episode offers insights, inspiration, and practical wisdom to deepen your spiritual journey. Tune in for authentic and encouraging conversations that will enrich and empower your walk with God.
The Hearing God Podcast
5. Resting in the Resume of Christ: Freedom From Performance
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Do you ever feel caught in an exhausting cycle of spiritual performance? One day you're on top of the mountain feeling qualified for God's blessing, the next you're in the valley of disqualification wondering how you'll ever measure up.
This conversation dives deep into one of the most insidious traps believers fall into: spiritual resume building. Anthony and Dan explore how we unconsciously build credentials to present to God, hoping to earn His approval, blessing, and power in our lives. Yet this approach leaves us perpetually exhausted and ultimately discouraged when we inevitably fall short.
Welcome and Personal Healing Journey
Speaker 1Welcome to the Hearing God Podcast. I'm Anthony Moore.
Speaker 2And I'm Dan Lamas. For over a decade, anthony and I have been diving deep into weekly conversations about the prophetic, the mystical and the matters of the heart.
Speaker 1And we invite you into these weekly conversations. We hope you feel like an honored guest at our table, so pull up a chair, settle in and let's get started at our table. So pull up a chair, settle in and let's get started. Well, here we are. Here we are. How's it going Dan?
Speaker 2It's going good. Yeah, I am feeling good, feeling good and intrigued by a. There's a physical issue, a joint issue actually, that I have been praying through and living through for well, you know, for maybe a year and a half going on and almost two years now. Yeah.
Speaker 2And it's been a continual prayer journey for me and not to sound too pious in that, it's been a pretty raw prayer journey for me for close to two years now, but not at all to go into great detail about it. But I wanted to say that it's fun and it's intriguing to be on a prayer journey like this for healing. God won't allow me to give up on praying for healing and expecting him that he is healing and that the word amen means so be it, not the end.
Speaker 2And they live happily ever after, and just the way he's teaching me that. So I've just been on a recent new part of that journey. It's almost like I see it in a digital reality. In some ways it's a long journey, but it's not.
Speaker 1I'm going in a cycle with my hand.
Speaker 2Everybody's listening. I'm making a circle with my hand in the air.
Speaker 2I was going to say that there's a cycle it's not a cycle of oh, I don't think prayer's working, I'm going to give up and then restarting again. It's really like it's almost like a spiral staircase, like I'm making a journey on a staircase that's going around. I feel like there are some lessons I keep learning, but I feel like I'm making progress and I have to. The reason why I said all of this is I'm testifying. Today.
Speaker 2I realized that this, this God's healing for this joint that I have, may very well be surgery. That may be part of the journey, and I'm I'm all in on saying, yeah, that's part of God's healing plan for me, but that is not on the schedule for a while and who knows when that's going to be. And in the meantime, I am continually praying and anointing with oil and expecting that I could stand up from this podcast and literally be completely healed. God's in process, healing me. So I just want to say he's doing some new things in it and I'm experiencing some new mobility and comfort and I'm just really giving him some glory for that.
Speaker 3So that is how I am doing my friend, that's awesome.
Speaker 1I was going to get super nerdy on you because sometimes it feels like there, you know, are cycles in our lives and rhythms and all of that and this. The super nerdy part was going to be like there's actually in programming there are things called loops and, uh, every time you know a loop is accomplished, there are certain loops that you can create where there's incremental change right, there's like a counter or just a simple way that you can sort of increment.
Speaker 1So there's these incremental changes as you go through these loops and anyway, I was just thought that would be.
Speaker 2There's a weird technology reference with Interesting yeah, anyway Well you know, I think it is fun to imagine that the things that we discover on an earthly plane are hints to there's more in the spirit to be discovered, right. So you talk about in technology instead of saying thank God for technology solving our problems, it's saying thank God for those glimpses into some eternal realities that actually inform our physical.
Speaker 1They reveal something about God.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's like oh, there's more, there's more. You know, I think that's cool yeah.
Speaker 1No, that's good, that's good.
Speaker 2And how are you? Oh?
Speaker 1I'm me, I'm great. I had a great day off yesterday. It was fun, energetic, did some things. But yeah, I think I was. I guess where my head and my heart were just this morning.
Performance and Disqualification in Faith
Speaker 1It really just as if you followed us this far, you would know that when we record this, we come out of our Wednesday morning prayer room, yes, and that often we meet with the Lord there and quite often we do that. That is our intent, but often we come out of that with some things on our heart and just this morning it really felt like there was just some heat as we were praying into just this area of performance and disqualification. And how often that voice perhaps even a voice of condemnation, whatever that voice is that wants to take you out of the game right.
Speaker 1That this reality is that as humans I think we're so aware, like anybody who wants to follow Jesus genuinely right, follow Jesus genuinely right has genuine like. I believe Jesus. I have encountered him, he's captured my heart and I just give my whole life to him. People who want to follow Jesus genuinely often face this battle of there's this lie that creeps in, of measuring up right Like where it really hits their daily life, and anyone who follows Jesus knows how messy it can get at times, right when it can feel like this was not a great week or this was not a great day or this was not a great five minutes or whatever.
Speaker 1Everybody knows what that's like and I feel like at times there's this voice that you could call it a lie. So if it's a lie, however that comes, whether that's you know, a bad thought pattern or actually something, you know, something more malevolent, we can say that lie is, you know, not from heaven, so therefore it's demonic in nature. Lie that says that it's a creep in that we start to build our own resume, right.
Speaker 1In that we start to live from our own performance. I don't know for whatever reason I was praying into it like this. It was about resume building, and sometimes that language creeps out when I pray, because it's like sometimes when we come before God and we ask him for something, oftentimes our own performance will play back in our minds as we're praying, almost as if to say God see, I did this, I did this, I did this and because of that will you do this and there's a whole bunch of problems with that.
Speaker 1And I think the idea is like for us this morning we were praying into that idea of like is like for us.
Speaker 1This morning we were praying into that idea of like. People get really discouraged and they take themselves out of the game. Right, or they may not do that intentionally, but as a result of agreeing or the feeling of not measuring up, it becomes so powerful that they lose heart. They become discouraged, so they're not consciously choosing to come out of the game, but in essence, that's what's happening, because they fail to lean into the more that God has, and that sometimes requires choice.
Speaker 1But I think one of the things was is that the lie is, is that that there is the as I impact that you know this morning? The lie is, is that's that, while that's true, that that we often get really messy as humans? Uh, the lie is that it's only partially true, right, and therein is that sometimes that feeling gets so powerful, like I keep messing up or I keep making the same mistakes or I keep sinning in this way or whatever. The lie is that people stop there and they fail to believe. Almost Back a few weeks ago, we were talking about our heart being convinced. The heart needs to be convinced that Jesus has made the way and the only resume that we need is actually the resume of Jesus, because he's actually died to give us his resume, if that makes sense, and so I think, that's the area of.
Speaker 1I just feel like that so many believers, from one way or the other, get really discouraged by how things are going, because the people that we know, lots of people who, whether they're prophetic people or just people who just genuinely want to follow Jesus.
Speaker 1And again, let me clarify everybody's prophetic. But it's this cycle, that sort of or this thing that happens in people where they just take themselves out of the game because of how they feel. People where they just take themselves out of the game because of how they feel and again, the feeling is not wrong, I guess Feeling a little discouraged by how you are measuring up. It's at least a reflection of reality, okay. So yeah, none of us can really measure up.
Speaker 1That's the thing is, none of us really do measure up, and God isn't actually expecting us to measure up. He's just given us the resume of Jesus and therefore that changes everything. So it's like okay. So in these days where especially for I'll just use my story there are times in my life where I know that I haven't measured up, but yet somehow, by the grace of God and this is really by the grace of God, by the grace of God, and this is really by the grace of God somehow, every time that I push past, how powerful that feels the feeling of failure, the feeling of just being really messy.
Speaker 1Every time I push past that, I step into this realm of being, you know, of living and operating and identifying with the resume of Jesus, and that's where we should be right. I'm not saying that's perfect, but I'm saying that when that happens, yeah, I suddenly become aware that God's grace is sufficient. I become aware and again I learned that over time, over years, right, that God's grace is sufficient. I become aware, you know, and again I learned that over time, over you know, years, right, that God's grace is sufficient.
Speaker 2I'm like, okay, lord, here's my mess, and I know that you aren't rejecting me because of my mess Anyway, I think that was just a powerful reality this morning, as we were praying yeah, yeah, well, you know God, the Father, son, holy Spirit. God really loves humans and God has a place for humanity in his creation. Mm-hmm.
The Lie of Needing to Measure Up
Speaker 2And he is for us because we are his creation. Yes, and he is for us because we are his creation. Yes, and he is not going to let humanity slip through his fingers. But there is a force in the universe that often Paul talks about it as the dominion of darkness that's present and it is fighting against God's creation. And so if the dominion of darkness of course, course, we believe that you know there's real spiritual entities you know, we believe, you know that there's a, there's satan, who, who rules that dominion of darkness?
Speaker 2but then we believe there's in demonic, you know there's demonic spirits and so on totally and just the general force of evil in our world that fights against us being able to experience that love that God has for us. And one of the great deceptions right from the beginning is causing us to doubt that we qualify for that goodness for that goodness and that we can live in the garden and that we can eat whatever fruit we want and enjoy life and enjoy fellowship and enjoy God's provision freely.
Speaker 2There's that choice that we don't eat from this one tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, from this one tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Speaker 2Well, you know, the enemy wants to come and cast doubt on that whole process that God actually is holding out on us, you know, and so it's a very human thing to have to wrestle with that, like have to wrestle with thinking I have to qualify for the thing that I already possess, right, you know, that's good.
Speaker 2You know, like just that that is always the, it's always the fight, you know, and so the qualifying being good enough, we need to be able to, we need to be able to trust the constant presence of the Lord with us and in us, to constantly be reminding us of the truth, because what we don't pick up on is even the dwelling on the thought that I need to be good enough is actually a problem. It is, it absolutely is. Yeah, and I'm becoming more and more aware, as God helps me with this, of His love that goes before us. He qualifies us so that we can reign and rule as we live on this planet, like he doesn't call us to go out and rule and reign on this planet as humanity, so that we can earn his love.
Speaker 2You know, it's actually he gives us this acceptance he's done everything for us in salvation, because he's freed humanity from fretting over that. It's like this amazing decoding thing where, when guilt and condemnation wants to overtake me, I need to recognize that anything within me that says I need to measure up to something that's actually an invitation to believe the gospel again. It's an opportunity for repentance, yeah, and repentance doesn't have to be something I run from. It can actually be a hopeful thing.
Speaker 1Oh yeah, no one really wants to run from repentance, but we do Right and that's the trick right there.
Speaker 2It's not that God enjoys making me repent. That's the enemy's lie. The enemy can get us on this treadmill of thinking God actually knows you're not good enough and he knows if he keeps you feeling miserable, you'll keep coming back to him. We do this twisted thing, I know, eh. Instead of saying the law of the spirit has done what the law could not do, right, the law couldn't actually like. The law was great in the standard that it promoted, because that's what the kingdom life looks like, but it did not have the power to enable people to actually fulfill the law yeah, so the spirit through through christ jesus, the law of the spirit actually did away with that pressure.
Speaker 1Yeah, well, it's just like yeah, yeah, because and again, like you know, paul, I think you know where he's kind of like talking about the law of this. You know the law and the law of the spirit of life. Like he doesn't say that the law from the old covenant is evil. He actually says it's perfect. But what it did was it actually revealed the inability of man?
Speaker 1to actually abide by the law and I think you see it a little bit, like you see it in Jeremiah. You see it, I think, isaiah, jeremiah, ezekiel, even right, it's where God's promise throughout all of this is that I'm gonna write my law on their hearts.
Speaker 1Right, and even in Ezekiel there where it says I'm gonna take the heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. Even in the midst of the law and humanity's struggle with the law in the old covenant, god is foreshadowing to a better day, and the day that you and I, dan, and everyone listening and as the church, we're living in this era now where, in Christ, god's law is written on our heart, and so that's a beautiful and a profound thing. It is.
Speaker 1And I was just thinking, I think, thinking this a little bit, though, um, just as you were talking as me, as man, we are, we're so ruled by and this is not a good thing, but we are so ruled at times by our feelings, right, um, whether that's discouragement, whether that's hopelessness, despair, and those are power. I have seen. Number one I've seen that at work in my own life. Number two I see that, as a pastor, I see those feelings at work so powerfully in people around me, and how that, how that those, those feelings, put whatever label on you, but in that, in that sort of vein, they work so hard to, or they're so effective at disqualifying people right, and they actually do.
Speaker 1And again, talking about feelings and you know I always right there at the top of the list of things of how Anthony processes feelings is just that quote from I don't even know who said it in the beginning. But how feelings are great servants but terrible masters, right? Great servants but terrible.
Speaker 1Masters, right, and I don't know if that's a Bill Johnson quote or whatever, but this idea of how feelings are important, so they do actually matter right. And that's where I think some camps of the church go way too far in being completely dismissive of feelings, right, but I think just what, I was just going to reiterate how powerful they are how real they are, but actually that, and they are important and valued, but letting them rule you is where that sort of gets off track.
Speaker 2Yeah, right.
The Tree of Life vs. Knowledge of Good and Evil
Speaker 1And so just in this area of like, how powerful those things are to take people out of. But by the game I mean by living a victorious life in Christ, where God works powerfully in and through you, because you're so consumed and fixated on your own performance, like in this way, and I think that that reality exists in. It's a real thing that we, you know, we as a house, we as a body in this region, we really wrestle with, with this, this yeah, this idea, yeah, yeah, totally, totally, yeah, I think we need.
Speaker 2I think we need to really help each other out with with what to do with emotions. Uh, they shouldn't rule us. Yeah, we do. We do need to acknowledge that that we feel them correct we're having and they're valid as well right, like when we're having an emotion, the, the uh, and say it's a say, it's a dark one, say it's a dark emotion that doesn't reflect the fruit of the spirit yeah, uh discouragement uh bitterness whatever, yeah, okay, yeah bitterness is that's.
Speaker 2That's perfect, it's a good one right yeah, yeah yeah, so yeah, like, yeah, like. Oh, he's gonna get his yeah and you. There's a thing you feel, yeah, there's an emotion you feel, and it sort of seems to grab on. It doesn't help to deny you feel that Right, Right. Which is when we say, sometimes, don't trust your feelings. Sometimes people will say, oh, I'm going to deny that.
Speaker 1I'm bitter, yes.
Speaker 2Yeah, oh, I'm not bitter, I'm a Christian.
Speaker 3Yeah, I'm a child of God. I'm not bitter. Yeah, I'm not bitter. I'm a Christian. I'm a child of God.
Speaker 2I'm not bitter when it pops up. Our encouragement to each other needs to be hey, let's take a second and let's let God speak into that a little bit.
Speaker 1Hey, can we take a minute and let's just do you have any sense from God where that started? Well, because, because actually it was three days ago, or right? Yeah, like I think what we find is I think you and I have found this, uh for sure, and others as well this is not unique, but that when god comes and he speaks to your heart, he doesn't, he isn't dismissive of those feelings, right? Right, he's never belittling or dismissive of these, sometimes these powerful emotions that we may be feeling, whether it's about ourselves, whether it's about God or whether it's about others.
Speaker 1Right, he's never dismissive about it but, he comes and again like how he speaks to those things maybe he doesn't even address. And again, I think this is Graham, I think this is a Graham Cooke idea, where God speaks to you, to your new self.
Speaker 2right, he speaks to you as the you that he intended right.
Speaker 1And when he does that, he has this way of number one not being dismissive of the emotion, but also getting to the root. Yeah, totally, and it's this powerful reality of again I know I've experienced that in my own life and I know that others have that when God comes and he speaks, he speaks to this place that isn't dismissive of how we feel, and oftentimes that's very powerful, right, uh, and I would, I would say, probably most frequently that's very powerful, yeah, but he speaks to us in such a way that validates that and and also gets to the root of the issue.
Speaker 2Yeah right, because if a person recognizes that this bitterness well first of all, I would want to say to them your whole being isn't bitter.
Speaker 1Yes.
Speaker 2Like. There's a part of you that feels bitter. There's a part of you that's bitter about something Christ in you, the hope of glory dwelling in you, which he does, and that renewed self that, like Paul says Christ in you, the hope of glory dwelling in you, which he does. Yeah, and that renewed self that like Paul says, you know the new self and old self. The new self is not bitter Right, but there's. You and every person is much more complex than we would imagine.
Speaker 2There's a part of you that has become bitter about something. It's just really good for us to recognize that isn't my whole identity Right? Like I have a bitter part in me and God wants to touch and heal that, and then he's present to do it, so that's helpful.
Speaker 1But it is worth realizing that when you have this thing, it can at times feel so large.
Speaker 2It does Because it can it feels like all of you.
Speaker 1Yeah, it feels like all of you because probably most or a lot of your attention is given to this one thing. Yep, I have a friend.
Speaker 2I have a friend who does healing prayer and she will if a person in a session is saying you know, I feel so angry or whatever.
Speaker 2She'll say, okay, just pay attention to that for a second, do you feel that somewhere in your body? And they might say, yeah, my shoulders. She'll say, okay, can we pray for your shoulders right now? Pray for peace. And so she prays for peace and god to reveal things, and then she'll kind of take them on a journey. But the connection is like, in an unspoken way, what's happening there is it's helping them to recognize my whole body doesn't feel angry. There's a part of me that does, and God will use that message your body's sending to you to pinpoint something, say, wow, okay, so where's that tension coming from? And it'll draw somebody to an interaction they have with a coworker three days ago. And then you can go there and say, oh, we partner with christ to actually, you know, uh, free that part on, for you know, maybe forget through forgiving or through healing or whatever a combination of both, the person has that part restored and healed and welcomed back into the whole being like that process. It's interesting, but that thing of this isn't all of me.
Speaker 2That's bitter right, there's a part there's something going on in my being yeah that needs to be surrendered again. Right and I, I know for me I. It just helps me to recognize that you know that original picture of Adam and Eve eating from the tree of life, eating from the fruit of the tree of life. That feels like. That is what it feels like to eat the fruit from the tree of life. To me, who is Jesus? That confession and humbling ourselves, these are all really good things.
Speaker 2Yeah, but you can't find that at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and once in a while. I need to recognize within myself I am never going to be actually allowed or encouraged to eat the tree, the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That is literally never going to be my salvation like yes if I get in my mind I'm going to be so grown up and mature right that someday I can go march right up to the tree of knowledge of good and evil and eat the fruit.
Speaker 2Right, I'll be like god. Right it's like.
Speaker 1No, that's actually the lie right, because you could actually say well, you could actually draw the correlation between performance and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Speaker 2Yes, you totally can.
Speaker 1Because it suddenly creates this metric this is good, this is evil, when that's actually not necessarily. It's not that maybe I'm not going to make a theological statement here, but perhaps it was never the original design, maybe it was at some point we were going to suddenly be aware of what's good or bad or whatever good and evil, but going to that place was never the source of that. Now this is more theological right, where it is our feeding, and again you could definitely draw a connection to the tree of life and Christ. Right, our source for whatever we need. Right, how we go through this life, how we feed ourselves physically, emotionally, spiritually, how we feed ourselves was always meant to be Christ. It was always meant to be the tree of life, the bread of life. Right.
Speaker 2The water of life right.
Emotions as Servants Not Masters
Speaker 1So I guess I was just sort of hypothesizing.
Speaker 2Yeah, just so well. To take it to those 33 years and specifically the three years of Jesus' public ministry, like what you're saying right there, I could just see it really shining through those three years. Yeah. Where. Just to go with what you're saying there, it's like humanity was not meant for the knowledge of good and evil. Right, that wasn't ever meant to be our focus Right. What we're supposed to focus on is life.
Speaker 1And the knowledge of God. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2Yeah, and the tree of life as opposed to the knowledge of good and evil? It's like Jesus was the embodiment of life.
Speaker 2You know like where will we go? You have the words of life, those kinds of things and just the way Jesus operated. Like thinking back through all the gospel stories, I and our listeners know it doesn't seem like Jesus clarified a whole lot how they would know the difference between good and evil. Like you follow through the gospels and you're like so many times it seems like Jesus is coloring outside of the lines of what the clear law of good and evil looks like. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2And he just continually was like, yeah, well, I'm coming with a new commandment and that is to love one another. Yeah and okay. That's not letting them off the hook for living righteously. What it's saying is you're focusing on the wrong thing. If you focus on life and you focus on loving one another, you're going to need to lean on me, but your dependence is not gonna be. I need to get better at what is good and discerning what's evil. I need to draw closer to the source of life, which is always the relationship?
Speaker 1Yeah for sure. And I think, getting back to a little bit about the resume building, that's how we can get fixated. We can slide off into this resume building of these are the good things that I have done in my life to earn God's favor, his blessing, his power, whatever at work in my life. And I just think that that's such a sly and subtle but insidious trap, because we can often do it just in such an unconscious way. Yes, right, we actually need. And again I wonder if in this way right.
Speaker 1I'm just thinking. One of my favorite verses that I sort of live by and quote is that John 16, 13 is where Jesus is talking in the upper room discourse, and he's talking about what he says. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. And that was, and therein is the reality of, because again in that discourse he unpacks the Holy Spirit, who is with you but will be in you. And there is Marketing back to Ezekiel and you know Isaiah, Jeremiah, right, there's, the law suddenly becomes written on our heart.
Speaker 1But I'm gonna get sidetracked here. But I think the spirit of truth, the knowledge of God, you know this is Like he's leading us to this one place of focus, right, like by the Spirit. His intent is to keep reminding us and help to keep us growing that the source of life, that he is the source of life, it only comes from Him, it doesn't come from right. There's no other thing that you can do outside of knowing him. There's no other thing that you can do that can gain him. Right, like there's the way to God.
Speaker 1The way to knowing God only comes through the knowledge of Jesus, right, and so we're not building empires, we're not building a laundry list of all the good things that we've done in this world, and I think that most believers would say yes. Intellectually, I believe that the problem is is the heart isn't convinced of it yet, and I know that we've talked, we talked. So I don't want to slide back into the thing that our hearts, even though it's this ever present thing before us, but I think the thing that God is trying to do is that he's having these conversations with us to get us back to this place of feeding from from yeah the tree of life yeah, right, so I.
Speaker 2There's something you said in the, in the kind of the introducing us into this conversation, that I think is really intriguing you. I think this is what you said, you talked, you referred to the how that resume building pressure can be such a powerful pull.
Speaker 1It agreed yeah, right, yeah.
Speaker 2Well, what might help us is to recognize that when I'm behaving well, that is also a powerful force. Yes, but it makes me feel good. Yes, when I'm performing well, well when I actually am building it I'm being, I'm succeeding in building a good resume. Yeah, that's a great point I can get duped into buying into that power, and they're both it's not shaming, right there's, they're both pitfalls, right so I'm not ashamed of my good performance. It actually feels really powerful.
Speaker 1Yes, yeah.
Speaker 2And that may be even more insidious, because I get completely blindsided when I'm buying into the power of my good performance Right, as if God's smiling on it, saying I love when you perform well.
Speaker 1Right, that's so good, because actually I think that's part of when the fall happens. Right, I was doing so great and then this happened and suddenly I feel like I've fallen from an incredible height to an unimaginable depth because of whatever this thing was. But suddenly, right, you know what I'm saying, I do.
Speaker 2Yeah, I do, and I think if somebody's going to diagnose a bit how they're doing, if somebody is listening and they're in the place of feeling some shame right now because they've just screwed up in some way, yeah. They're a son or daughter of God, but they've screwed up. They're listening to this going. When will I ever get this together? It's worthwhile to say, when you were doing well, what did that mean to you?
Speaker 1What did that mean, when you were doing well what?
Speaker 2meaning were you deriving from that? If the answer is I know God's really happy with me. Yeah, I can expect answers to prayer. Mm-hmm, god, I feel the peace of God because I'm doing well. Yeah, god wants me to live here all the time.
Speaker 1Yeah, more people will get healed when I pray for them.
Speaker 2Yes, Like, yeah, this is, I'm going to be more fruitful because I'm doing well? Yeah, performing, paying attention to those reasons why can really help you get to know the Spirit better? Yeah, because he's so gentle in understanding that and saying I understand why that means that to you.
Speaker 2Yes, but I want to show you a better way. Yeah, like your good performance doesn't mean as if I were the Holy Spirit speaking to a child, to a son or daughter of God that what your good performance doesn't mean the same thing to me as your God as it does to you. Yes, you perform well. You draw conclusions that I don't draw. I draw the same conclusion as I do when you're not performing well. Right, I love you and I'm for you, and I don't want you to lose sight of how, for you, I am and I think I just want to we say this.
Speaker 1You know and have said this, you know this idea that our best, you know what is gosh, I'm going to say it but that our best day. How does it go?
Speaker 2Our best day isn't good go Like our best day isn't good enough, right, and?
Speaker 1our worst day isn't bad enough to take, to measure, to either measure up or to take us out, right I think, and so I think we. But we live in that right Because of the feeling, right, but it's the truth. Is is like I think just to kind of keep on what you were saying there that when we're living sort of our quote-unquote best day, that it really can subtly derail us because we start making more of it than what it is.
Speaker 1Again, on our best day, it's still the resume of Christ. On our worst day, we're still. You know, it's still the resume of Christ that we've been given, Because our best day will never measure up to Christ right, Like from a metric right, Some sort of whatever. It will never measure up, nor will our, Obviously, our worst day. But our worst day will never. But that's the beauty of grace, the beauty of the free gift that's been given to us, and so sometimes it takes, it's not even. Sometimes I feel like there's just when we start living in this economy. It's just we need the Holy Spirit to come in and show us what the pitfalls are. Yes, and I think it starts with a default position, Again what we've been saying. It starts with the default position of like it is only ever Christ, it is only ever Jesus, the finished work of the cross living in his name, like being positioned in the name of Jesus.
Speaker 1It is only ever that that's going to give us what we're actually really looking for.
Speaker 2Right, absolutely. Sometimes we forget in that scripture in Romans that there is now therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Right, because condemnation is never helpful. Never, because condemnation is never helpful.
Speaker 1Never.
Finding Rest in Christ's Performance
Speaker 2It's not a tool that God likes to use on his kids. It's recognizing, because Paul connects those thoughts. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because the law of the Spirit, through Christ, has done what the law could not do. It's like this. It's like, yes, God wants you to live according to the law, but he doesn't want you to obsess over how to get there.
Speaker 2Yeah, he's actually freed you so that the fulfillment of everything that pleases him lives in you, like it always will, and it's forever going to be refining, you and me.
Speaker 1Could I say this Is that you're in my journey to be obedient to the law is done relationally. Yes, absolutely Right, right it's always meant to be done relationally. It's always meant to be with a friend. Yeah, right, okay, yes, that's what I'm saying, is that it's like you and I need our best friend, the one who lives within us, the one whose law is written on our heart. We need His presence in our life and by this I mean the Holy Spirit so we're clear, but we need the relationship with Him the connection, the back and forth you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1I do the proximity, the conversation. We need that presence. We need his presence in our life so that we can fulfill the law.
Speaker 2Yeah, Right 100% where I thought you were going to to go, and maybe you were going to but, I'll throw it in there just as an encouragement, because I think even this podcast comes out of a decade of journeying together. For sure, and this is where I thought you were going to go.
Speaker 1Oh yeah, I'll just throw it in.
Speaker 2We need relationship with him, the Holy Spirit, with the triune God, and that happens together.
Speaker 2Agreed we need to share it humanly, you're right Community Community and something we were praying in the prayer room this morning that I just want to highlight again. Just out of Colossians 1, verse 12, paul's actually talking about how he's praying for his friends, and one of the things he prays for them is that they would give joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light. Sorry, I read the wrong verse. My bad, that's an amazing verse. Let me read verse 11 first. I have it highlighted on my phone.
Speaker 2Sorry, I read the wrong verse. My bad, that's an amazing verse. Let me read verse 11 first. Yes, I have it highlighted on my phone, but I didn't have 11 highlighted. But here we go, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might, so that you might have great endurance and patience. And the relationship that we have to have to have, yeah, it has to be relational. It provides great endurance and patience. Yeah, like so. There is a. There's an argument that could be made to say if I have a great performance day, yeah, but I am wiped out by all of the human effort I had to put into that, right? Yeah, god might be a little concerned for me, right? Right, because his will for me is great endurance and patience. And if the good performance I've lived today leaves me in despair, darkness, I'm discouraged, I'm wiped out, there's unrest in my heart. God wants me to pay attention to that.
Speaker 1Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2Because he's like what I want for you is endurance and patience, so he would be more open to me in that moment to say God, you know what? I tried really hard today and I did really well, but it also left me exhausted and discouraged. I'm sorry. I'm sorry because. I think I lean too much into being great. And it's not like he wants to condemn us, but he does want to draw us close and hug us and say I know, I understand, I get it.
Speaker 1Yeah, and I think to draw the line is again, because the part that's true is that he is inviting us into greatness and he isn't saying that hard work isn't bad, but it's just that when we make too much of the labor of our own hands, it can lead us to this destructive place where we just make too much of it and then suddenly, when Suddenly we Because oh yeah, you just fine-tuned something, thank you Can I just jump in?
Speaker 2Yeah, for sure, because you fine-tune something really cool there. Maybe he would even say to me of course you're worn out. That was a hard day yeah instead of giving me a medal for performing well right, it's like yeah, of course, it's where the satisfaction comes from. It's like right.
Speaker 1Right, of course, that they wore you out. Yeah, why wouldn't it right? You worked really hard. You're not ashamed of me like I'm assuming he's gonna be ashamed of me because I'm tired.
Speaker 2Yeah, I think this will happen yeah, he's not ashamed of me, because I'm tired. He might want to come along, go yeah man that day kicked your butt, man, yeah of course it did.
Speaker 1Yeah, look at it, yeah, and it yeah, but it's, I think I think the part that takes us out is because maybe we feel like we shouldn't feel a certain way or tired or exhausted.
Speaker 2Yeah, I'm ashamed of myself.
Speaker 1Yeah, but the Lord would be like, yeah, way to go, that was a great day, yeah, and also, but also, don't be satisfied in. Do you know what I'm saying? Don't get your identity from the hard day, maybe even the winds of the day. Your, your, your identity and your satisfaction still only must come from me, right, and that I think that's good can I can.
Speaker 1I say that even like even, why the fall is. So you know, if you, if you fall from that place, quote, unquote, right that that it can become so destructive because you build this world on these winds where suddenly, the winds become your identity and not him.
Prayer and Final Thoughts
Speaker 1So, anyway, just to swing back there. Yeah, man, so good, I'm grateful. Yeah, maybe we can just, maybe we can land the plane there and I feel like maybe we can just pray into that God would. Yeah, maybe we can pray into that God would just give us eyes to see and any lies that we may be believing, but also just grace to receive his performance, and so maybe I'll just do that and we can land the plane. Yeah so.
Speaker 1Father, we come before you, god. We just thank you, lord, first of all for the finished work of the cross. We thank you for Jesus, we thank you for his performance. Lord, we just acknowledge knowledge. Lord, his perfection, lord, his ability and.
Speaker 1His record, lord, to be perfectly obedient, to walk in grace and truth, to love God and love others perfectly, lord. And so I just thank you, lord, we just acknowledge that. And so, lord, for anybody listening, lord, I just pray, god, for Lord, that you would open the eyes of all of our hearts to see the ways in which we're partnering with the wrong economy, lord, where we're partnering, we've agreed with an economy, lord, of performance, lord, that you haven't designed for us and you do not intend for us to live there, lord. And so, god, I just pray for eyes to see that, god, we repent, lord, of our own efforts, lord, we repent of self-sufficiency, of resume building, god, we renounce it, god, we say that it has never been helpful for us, in good ways or bad ways, lord, it's never been helpful for us to agree or to believe this economy, lord, or to live and operate in that economy, god.
Speaker 1So we just release that to the foot of the cross, Lord, we just say, jesus, would you come and deal with that in us, lord? And we just receive all the grace, the mercy, the kindness that you have for us. And it's our joy, Lord, to release that to you today, because you're kind and you freely take that from us, lord, as we freely release it, Lord. So I just pray for us today, lord, that we would just continue to walk in relationship with you. You are the tree of life, you are the river of life, you are the bread of life, lord, all of it, lord. Life only comes from you, lord. So we receive that life anew and afresh today in Jesus' name Amen.
Speaker 2Amen. Well, that's a wrap on this episode. It's been a privilege to have you as an honored guest.
Speaker 1as we all learn to hear God better, If your time with us has been encouraging and you think this conversation will be helpful to others, we would love it if you could share this podcast with the people around you.
Speaker 2Until next time.
