We think too much...

Something that I'm noticing about myself (and trying to change) and other people is that we constantly over-think. We overthink our worship. We overthink our giving. We overthink our church attendance. We overthink our relationship with God. We overthink ourselves to death: a spiritual, emotional, mental death. We read the books. We listen to all the podcasts. We talk with people who don't really know any more than we do. We search and search because we like to know the ins and outs, the ups and downs, the whys, the hows, etc; or am I the only one? because we think so much- we miss God because God is not concerned with our ability to figure Him out. He's not. (See Isaiah 55:8-9) We forget that.  We miss him because we're so caught up in our thoughts- in our interpretation or opinion- that we miss Him.

One of the main ways that we do this is in our opinion of ourselves and our perception on our Christian life. We beat ourselves up too much- because we think about ourselves too much- because we are self-centered and egotistical (OK? I'm talking to myself). We can point out every time in the last 24 hours that we've failed at Christianity. Every time we've thought something we shouldn't. Every time we've said too much. Every emotion that we shouldn't have felt but did anyway. We can point it out- but we can't remember the love or the embrace of God's presence from a church service or a quiet time (maybe because we don't attend or have bible studies regularly). So we walk around thinking that life was better off before salvation because we didn't have to deal with the condemnation of not living up to an unattainable standard.

Really? That's how it's gonna go down? THAT is the attitude we're going to have towards God for giving us a hope and an eternal future? So basically we're like that kid that didn't really want to go to Summer Camp but his parent's made him get on the bus: happy when we get there- but miserable the entire ride up. That's NOT what God intended when he saved us. He wanted to give us a ridiculously full life FULL of life (See John 10:10).

You see- our introspection and constant over-thinking gets us into a state of perpetual loser-ship. We get hung up on the fact that we are never good enough. We will never be good enough. There is always going to be SOMETHING to work on (my gripe just this week... ).  We forget about God's grace...His mercy...and ridiculous love- that even though we will never be good enough- He is- and that's all that matters.

If we would stop focusing on ourselves so much and focus on God- who's really the only worthy of THAT much attention... our outlook on life would be a whole lot brighter (I know mine would), our worship would be a whole lot freer; because we would realize that- yeah, we've got a lot of work to do... we're not perfect and we never will be...but we've got a God who knows that- who's OK with it- who's rooting for us to make it, who desires us for us to quit looking down but look up to where Help is, for us to stop wallowing in our inability but to find strength in His ability- and who will love us in spite of our inconsistency- and in turn He would be able to work in us and turn us into something good (See Philippians 1:6). We just have to trust him and let go and stop THINKING.... we think that we are trying to be "good" Christians by whipping ourselves into "shape" by keeping account of everything and thinking on how we could be better - but in reality it's just a twisted form of pride and arrogance: to think that we, by our own strength, can make ourselves any better; and we are missing out on the goodness of all that He is: all of the love that He has, all of the grace that He can give. Our Christian life was not supposed to be a "process" but a relationship. I'd take a relationship over a process any day- so I'll stop thinking so much... and start trusting...

What about you?