Ditch the Scorecard

If I’m hanging out with you, it’s because I like you, or because I want to get to know you.

Maybe I shouldn’t have to say that, but as a (kinda loud) Christian, I want to make sure you know that you are not a project.  I have no ulterior motives.  I am not judging you.  I’m not taking your spiritual temperature.  Heck, I probably won’t even invite you to church, unless you tell me you are looking for one.

Does that make me a bad Christian?  Probably.  But I’m already a bad Christian, so just add it to the list.

Have I been living in New England too long?  Maybe.

Some would say that I lack conviction, that I’m ignoring the commandment (the great commission) to go and make disciples.  That’s okay – I do not think I’m ignoring the Bible and I’m not too concerned about someone else’s contrived “good Christian” checklist.  Well, not anymore.  But there was a time when I was more focused on what I was doing instead of who I was becoming.  In a way, I think it’s a natural progression.

A friend, whom I would consider a mature Christian, confided that she sometimes feels guilty because she has never led someone to Christ – like she wasn’t good enough or she wasn’t doing something right.  It made my heart sink because I know how much she loves the Lord and I know the amazing things she does for people, and yet, somehow, she had internalized the message that it wasn’t good enough.

She didn’t have any “souls saved” on her Christian scorecard.

I understand this pressure, and I’m grateful that my husband, Keith, gave me a glimpse into the secret ways that God works.  He did not become a Christian until he was in his mid-30’s.  Keith had a boss and co-worker (Scott McCrae and Doug Reinsch) who were Christians, and although they never talked directly to him about God, Keith knew that there was just something “different” about their lives.  This prompted Keith to begin searching, to find a church, and eventually he stumbled upon CS Lewis whose writings helped Keith realize that you didn’t have to, in his words, “turn your brain off to be a Christian.”  Keith said it was over a period of time that he came to believe – it didn’t happen in a moment or on a specific date while praying the “sinners prayer.”

At first, it bothered me that I couldn’t write a date in the front of his Bible documenting when Keith was “saved” (as was customary in my family).  But there was no doubt that God had broken through and Keith’s heart belonged to Him.  In more ways than I can list, Keith has taught me about the mystery of God and how we cannot predict or control or quantify Him.

Thankfully, Keith had an opportunity to tell Scott and Doug about their impact on his life.  But many of us will never know that we were a pebble marking the way along a meandering path that lead someone to Christ.  And that’s okay.

Through the years, I have learned that God can “break through” and reveal Himself in so many bizarre and unpredictable ways (through circumstances (good or bad), through nature, books, music, children (I’m convinced they are God’s secret agents!), the extraordinary and the mundane, etc.)  All God needs is a heart that is looking for Him, because He is already trying to reach us and He wants to be found. 

I believe in the church, and certainly preaching and teaching and witnessing have an important place in leading people to God, but sometimes we see ourselves as maybe a little too important.  God wants to involve us in His work here on earth but He doesn’t need us (He’s God, after all – He once used a donkey to talk (Numbers 22:28), so He doesn’t really need my mouth to speak His message).  We sometimes miss or dismiss His work because it doesn’t fit into our neat definition of who God is and how He works.

In the denominations where I have worshipped for most of my life, there is always pressure to “witness,” to invite, to cultivate relationships with people who do not know God (this assumption alone can be pretty dangerous), to know how to share your faith story (your personal testimony) in less than two minutes, etc.  There are Biblical foundations for bearing witness to what God has done in our lives, but if you are trying to calculate how many people you have invited to church, how many tracts you have handed out, or how many people you have prayed with to accept Christ, then you’ve created a false measure.

In our society we try to measure everything – if you can’t put numbers on it and rank it, then it’s no good.  But the spiritual journey doesn’t work like that.  We make baby steps and big leaps and we go backwards and we stall – there are so many factors and much of it is out of our control (which is maddening, but necessary because humans are total control freaks and power grabbers).  We might desperately want a friend to know God’s love, but we can’t make that happen – all we can do is reflect the love of God that we already know.  And when/if that friend opens their heart to God, we can’t really take any credit.  It’s like witnessing a miracle and then trying to claim we made it happen.  We can only bear witness to our Savior – we cannot be the Savior.  But many of us, with good intentions, try to play God, and we are disappointed when people don’t respond or God doesn’t use us in some momentous way.

The reason I no longer spend time worrying about the who, when, where and how of “witnessing” is simply because God told me to “drop it.”  I had a big wake up call over a decade ago.  I remember exactly when it happened.  We had been invited to a party and I said (out loud – I now find it hard to believe these words left my mouth) to Keith, “I don’t really want to go to the party, but maybe if we go to their party, then they will go with us to church.”

I could punch my old self.

In that moment, I felt STRONG conviction from God.  Has your parent ever grabbed your arm or shoulder just hard enough to make you realize you were in trouble and you better shape up?  That’s how the moment felt to me.  I’m paraphrasing here, but basically, I heard Him say, “Don’t be a hypocrite.  I just want you to genuinely love people and, if you go over there with some hidden agenda, you are NOT helping!   If it’s not real, it’s not of Me – that’s all about your ego. “

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again . . . God can be incredibly rude at times.

I mean, I thought I was helping.  I’m trying to point people to God, right?  Well, yes, but if it’s with the wrong heart, then the effort is pretty empty (and manipulative and arrogant – ugh!).

In some ways, that moment let me off the hook.  I finally felt free to just love people without any expectations or obligations.

It sounds so simple, but to this evangelist’s daughter, it was a revelation.

I vividly remember the first time I felt like an “evangelist.”  I was nine-years-old, and after a revival service one night, a little girl, a year or two older than me, named Candice Mills came up to me and asked how to be “saved.”  I told her we could go find the pastor or my Dad, and she said, “No, I want you to tell me.”  At first I felt panicked – no one had ever asked me how to be saved.  But then I realized, I’m the daughter of an evangelist; I definitely know what to do!  We grabbed a Bible and I took her through the “Roman roads” (five or six verses in the book of Romans that explain salvation) and when she said she understood and still wanted to accept Christ, we prayed the “sinners prayer” together.

I still remember the shock and thrill of knowing at age nine that I could help usher someone into a relationship with God.  It was humbling and empowering all at once.   It was a beautiful moment, but when you are human, nothing is pure, and the experience was also fuel for my good-girl, approval-seeking heart.

I am grateful that God has given me many opportunities through the years to pray with people as they open their hearts to Him.  The moments are beautiful in ways that I can’t put into words.  When you bear witness to those moments, you get this little glimpse of God that is so powerful, so fleeting, so real, that you just want to experience it again.  The moment is about the other person, but when God’s presence is so pervasive, you can’t help but be affected as well.  It is a “high” in all the good ways, but those are moments that only God can grant.  I wanted more of those moments (that we can’t “conjure”), and somehow I thought if I just did the right song and dance, God would show up, clapping and shouting for an encore.  Pride makes us incredibly blind and stupid.

It’s not my parent’s fault that I developed “performance Christian” issues.  They spent their lives sharing the Good News, but they were always “real” and never tried to change or manipulate people.  (I recently received a beautiful email from one of their old friends who said, “You and Morgan were blessed with down to earth parents who never tried to be anything they weren’t.”)  In fact, they tried to steer me away from this belief that I needed to be “good enough.”  But approval is addictive and motives can remain stealthy behind “religion” — I was patted on the back and told I was a “good” Christian from the time I was a little girl, because I sang in church, I could give my testimony and pray aloud, I went on mission trips, I could tell you the books of the Bible and rattle off scripture.

 

(This is me singing at a school assembly and in the recording studio as a little girl.)

None of these things are bad – it’s great to memorize scripture and go on mission trips and serve the church and witness to others – God tells us to do these things.  But we have to check our motives.  Are we doing these things because we love God or because we are trying to get God (or other people) to love us?  Sometimes there’s a fine line.

I just finished the book Found by Micha Boyett and I could relate with her as she talked about the pride that can enter into our lives, even when (and especially when) we are trying to do the right thing.  Are we doing what is right because we love God or because we are seeking His (or others’) approval?  She writes, “It doesn’t take much for humans to turn the purpose of a spiritual practice . . . into a rules-based recital . . . I know my tendency toward legalism.  It’s my most natural inclination.  I want to do the best thing.  I want Jesus to like me most.”

I’m still a total loudmouth when it comes to the love of God.  He’s awesome and I’d love to tell you about Him and everything He has done in my life.  But I don’t have any expectations.  I’m just going to try my best to live and love in the way that He leads me and then leave the rest to Him.  If there is something He wants me to say, I’ll say it, and if there’s something He wants me to do, I’ll do it – but it will be because I love Him and not because I’m trying to get Him to love me.  He already does.

I’m not encouraging you to be lazy about sharing your faith.  But I am encouraging you to have “real” and honest relationships with people.  I’m encouraging you to share your faith because God is good, and not because you are trying to convince Him that you are good.  Share your faith because your heart is overflowing with what God is doing in your life, and not because you are trying to fill up your heart by doing things for Him.

God calls us to be bold about our faith and there are lots of great scriptures about this.  “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes . . . “ Romans 1:16 And I believe we need to be ready to openly talk about God.  “Instead, you must worship Christ as Lord of your life.  And if someone asks you about your hope as a believer, always be ready to explain it.  But do this in a gentle and respectful way.”  1 Peter 3:15-16

But I think it’s more important to God that we are real and that we love others because He first loved us.  There are a lot of passages that talk about how God would rather have a sincere heart than some outward show (just a sampling:  Micah 6:6-8, Matthew 26:31-46, Matthew 7:21-23, Luke 21:1-3, Luke 18:9-14, etc.).

Jesus broke the “rules” all the time.  He always chose to love, even if His love didn’t convince people to believe (He didn’t always “win one for the team” – so don’t feel bad if you get a cold response to your enthusiasm for the Lord.  Even people who spent time in the presence of God Himself were not convinced.).  If anyone had the right to “keep score,” it was Jesus, but He didn’t go around bragging about how many people He had healed or how many souls He saved.  He did all sorts of things that might even deduct some “points” from His scorecard – like hanging out with drunkards and gluttons, tax collectors and prostitutes, to name just a few.  Jesus was constantly confronting people (especially the “religious”) to check their motives.  He tried to help us do away with the “us vs. them,” “the winners and losers,” the legalism that divides, judges, measures and ranks people into categories.  He tried to help us ditch the scorecards.

You might want to be an awe-inspiring mountain that stops people in their tracks and makes them look up to the Almighty.  But maybe God just wants you to be a pebble marking the way along a meandering path that will lead someone to Christ.

It’s all about pointing the way to Him, so mountain or pebble, it doesn’t matter.  Throw away the scorecard – just let God love you and love others through you and then leave the mystery to Him.