Working My Way Back to You God?

Ever since I was given the direction from God to start this blog, I have had so many topic ideas flooding my mind. I’ve been jotting them down as I receive them (really hope my iCloud doesn’t crash because I’ll lose my notes!) but I was having a hard time deciding which would make sense to write about first. I asked God in my prayers the other night to guide me to the next topic He wants me to write about. The next morning as I was getting ready for work a song popped in my head in the shower, which happens all the time. I find that God really talks to me early in the morning, it is quiet, there are no distractions and my mind is clear. People hear from God in so many different ways and one of the main ones I hear from Him happens to be through music. I have been a music fiend my entire life, I have literally thousands of songs and their lyrics stored away in my mind like a human juke box, so naturally God would use what I love to speak to me.

But I digress. The song that came in my mind is a classic by The Spinners “Working My Way Back to You”.   I started singing it to myself, except instead of “I’ve been working my way back to you babe, with a burning love inside” without even thinking I sang “I’ve been working my way back to you God, with a burning love inside”. Then I realized this was the answer to my prayer. I thought to myself OK God, I guess you want me to write about the fallacy that we can somehow work our way back to you. Then I listened to that song about four times on YouTube while I was getting ready, just to cement the idea in my mind. I love how when we hear from God it just energizes us and makes us want to act on it right away! That has been happening so much more often lately now that I’m working on getting closer to Him.

It is a very common misconception among Christians that we can work our way back to God through our own efforts. If you have been living with this belief, please don’t feel bad. Instead, consider yourself a victim of one of Satan’s biggest lies. I am here to testify that you don’t have to be a victim anymore…the most freeing thing in my whole journey has been to realize that NOTHING I can do will ever take me back to God. Nothing! Isaiah 64:6 states it very bluntly, “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags”. Wow, our acts of righteousness are filthy rags to the One who performed the greatest act of service no human being would ever be capable of. The realization our works are insignificant to our salvation can be really disheartening at first and make us feel hopeless, but I guarantee once you accept it as fact you will feel so much freer. If Satan can get you to accept the lie that your work can save you, then he has convinced you that you don’t need Jesus. Think about that…the very people who are most susceptible to this lie are the ones who sincerely want to be with God, yet by believing this they are saying they don’t really need Him. A big part of my transition has been realizing that I need God so much, and that I am nothing on my own. Once you find this out for yourself you will not feel worthless, you will feel amazing! God loves us so dearly that He did something for us that we could never do for ourselves, no matter how hard we work or for how long. All He asks for is our love and devotion in return.

I actually came to this understanding while still an active Mormon. God planted the seeds in me several months prior to my decision to leave organized religion. I was sitting in a Sacrament meeting on High Council Sunday. For any non-LDS readers, Sacrament is pretty tedious to begin with but High Council Sunday is well known for being the driest of the dry speakers that lull people to sleep with their rambling talks. Don’t diss me for saying that LDS people…you know it’s true! This particular Sunday was different though. The High Councilman was speaking on the atonement, a topic that has been hashed and rehashed so many times it’s easy to put your brain on autopilot and only half listen. He read a passage from a book many LDS people have probably read but I had never heard of called “Believing Christ” by Stephen E. Robinson. What he read was so different from anything I’d ever heard spoken in an LDS meeting before, I instantly got the strong urge to go find and read the book, which is what I did. That one talk has literally changed my life. If you are totally content with organized religion, I still challenge you to read the book, it will change your perception of the atonement and of your relationship with Christ. What the speaker shared boils down to this…you can’t work your way back to God, you can’t save yourself. So simple, but so radically different from what I had been taught my entire life. I am not here to bash the LDS church, but it, like most other churches, is so heavily focused on DOING that the idea of just loving and following God are lost in the background. We become so busy doing that we forget the real reason why we are doing it or even who we are doing it for. If you have ever found yourself saying “I have to go to a church meeting now” or “I have to teach Sunday School this week” or “I need to bring the new neighbors some cookies” you are missing the whole point! You are doing because you think it’s what you’re supposed to do. You think you can prove your worth and that God will be happy with you and accept you if you do those things. Guess what!? God loves you no matter what you do or don’t do! He accepts you as you are! I’m using lots of exclamation points in this post because I am so convinced of this and I want you to know it is the truth.

The whole point of the book “Believing Christ” is that so many of us believe in the atonement, believe in Christ as our Savior, but we don’t believe Him when He says He can save us from ourselves and our sins. This requires absolutely no effort on our parts, He has already done the work for us. What is required of us is to love Him and seek after Him constantly. Once you really find a true personal relationship with Christ you will bake your neighbors cookies or share the gospel with friends because you love Jesus so much you just feel happy all the time and want to spread your joy to others. The thing that so many church minded people (I myself was guilty) have gotten wrong for so long is thinking “I have to do all these things to get closer to God” then He will love me, when really you have to be close to and love God FIRST and then start serving Him because you love Him so much. I hope you will seriously take this into consideration, pray about it and see if it makes sense to you. It has been an epiphany for me and has really changed my heart towards God. In fact, right now I don’t feel like I am going out of my way to serve anyone because I am working on myself and being close to Him first so that I can effectively serve Him in the future. I could write so much more about this but I have touched lightly on areas that I will talk about in depth in other posts so I’ll save it for later. Until then, don’t ever forget how much God loves you and wants you to find Him and be happy. It isn’t as hard as it seems, because God really is within reach.