TR Hartley

Note, this lesson is meant to be helpful as a personal reflection or as a leader’s guide for a small group, youth group, etc.)

To speak in broad terms, every religion throughout history seeks to answer three primary questions.

1) Who or what is “the divine”? Or, for a Christian: Who is He?
2) Who or what is humanity? Or, Who are we?
3) What should the interaction between the Divine and humanity look like?

And, of course, each different religion will have different answers to those questions.

For the purpose of this article, I want to key in on that 3rd question.

“What should the interaction between the Divine and humanity look like?” Or, to put it more personally, “What does God want from me?”

I’d like to encourage you to stop reading for a moment, and consider the answer to that question. You could even take out a sheet of paper and write down some answers to that question.

Take a few minutes to really ponder this. It could be incredibly helpful to you in your walk with God.

Answering “What does God want from me?”

What’d you put down for your answer to “What does God want from me?”

I’ve led this lesson for probably over 150 people and taught it over 20 times, in one on one settings, in small groups, and to classes. There are a few answers that generally come up a lot.

• To love Him more.
• Obedience.
• To repent of (insert sin)
• Worship
• To be a better (spouse/parent/coworker/friend, etc)
• To tell others about Him

And those are great answers! Your answers to this question are also probably great answers.

And, I would like to suggest that most people (maybe including you!) answer that question wrongly.

Here’s what I’d like to propose: The answer to “What does God want from me?” is “For me to be with Him, and to be with Him in a way that enables and encourages others to be with Him.”

I think that answer is a paradigm shift for most Christians. It might “only” be a change of how we think about Christian life, but that change can have really big implications in our lives.

Another way to phrase the question “What does God want from me/humanity?” is “Why did God create me/humanity?” And I want to suggest that the answer to that question can’t be:

• Obedience. God didn’t create you to just obey Him. He could’ve created robots which would consistently obey Him, and instead He made people, which is almost the exact opposite.
• To fulfill some role in ministry. Jesus while entering into Jerusalem explained to the religious elite that if the people didn’t give glory to God, God could’ve turned stones into ministers and witnesses. (See Luke 20:40)
• Worship or love. Those clearly delight God, but I don’t think they’re the starting point.

In the Old Testament, people could worship God, obey God, love God, and repent of sins. They didn’t do any of those perfectly in the Old Testament, but the Christians in the New Testament also don’t do any of these things perfectly. Jesus didn’t have to die for any of those to come to pass. And yet God the Father sent God the Son to die on behalf of humanity. Why?

I think the answer to that is: Because God doesn’t want to be separated from His people. He doesn’t want to be separated from you! And so, He did something about that, because He wants you to be with Him.

Let’s look at a famous passage that illustrates this.

Mary and Martha

Luke 10:38-42: As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, He came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to Him.  39 She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what He said. 40 But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to Him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

41 “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, 42 but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

Do you see it?

Do you realize that Martha was correct and in the right? (At least, according to her society and everyone she knew.) In first century Judaism, hospitality was not optional; you couldn’t be a good person and not be hospitable. This is even more true for people who had welcomed a person of honor into their home.

And so, Martha, an unmarried Jewish woman, had one of the two most notable religious figures of her day – the other being John the Baptist – in her living room, the Rabbi everyone was talking about! (See, for example, Luke 4:14: “Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about Him spread through the whole countryside.” )

Of course Martha needed to extend to Him honor! That included a number of different rituals and customs, such as foot washing, baking fresh bread and providing a meal, etc. And so Martha was scurrying hither and yon, desperately trying to do the “right” thing to show honor to her guest, Jesus.

All the while, her sister Mary was just SITTING there, not doing anything to show honor to Jesus, ugh. (And sitting at the feet of a rabbi was the posture that a disciple of that rabbi would take! How presumptuous!) Not only was there a lot of household chores that Mary wasn’t helping with, but she was also actively dishonoring Jesus by not taking part of the various greeting and hospitality customs.

And Martha can’t get Mary to help. It’s frustrating, but also shameful for Martha that her sister is acting this way when Jesus is at their home.

Finally out of options, she turns to Jesus and says (my paraphrase): “Jesus, I am SO sorry that Mary is being so disrepectful. Since she won’t listen to me, will You please tell her to help so we can show You the honor You deserve?”

And Jesus’ response to her was scandalous. It might not seem that way to you in your cultural setting, but what Jesus replies to Martha is wild to a first century Jew.

“You are worried about many things. Mary has chosen the better portion, and it won’t be taken from her.“

Do you see it? Jesus is telling Martha: “I care more about Mary being WITH Me than about the different things she could do FOR Me that would take her away from Me.”

The True Vine and Its Branches

Let’s keep thinking through this. We’ll look next at a famous passage from John 15 (my emphasis added):

John 15:1-8: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2 He cuts off every branch in Me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit He prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. 3You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. 4 Remain in Me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in Me.

5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in Me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from Me you can do nothing. 6 If you do not remain in Me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. 7 If you remain in Me and My words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 This is to My Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be My disciples.

It isn’t that bearing good fruit doesn’t matter. It does! It’s just that the only way to get to the result of “good fruit” is to be with God.

I’m not saying that obedience isn’t important. (For other articles on this topic, please see: “Litmus Test” (to be published soon), “What Is (and Isn’t) Repentance?”, and my Statement of Faith, point 3.) I think obedience to God is vital for Christians! But, that obedience only finds its value as a part of being WITH God.

Sin is grievous to God both because it wrong and wicked and impure on a moral level, absolutely. But more to the point, sin takes people out of a right relationship with God.

Obedience to God is important, and don’t let anyone tell you it isn’t! But the importance of obedience is placed in the importance of being WITH God, and therefore shunning anything that would get in the way of that, which is to say, shunning sin.

It does matter to God that you are a correct and morally upstanding person. But that moral rightness is and should be an outcropping of your abiding relationship with God, not the starting point of a relationship with God. (Ie, I am with God because I obey. WRONG. I obey God because I live in His presence.)

To me, this is the starting point of a genuinely Christian faith.

If this isn’t the case, how do you navigate repentance?

If the main thing God wants from you is for you to obey, then when you’re in sin, you need to figure this out and get this right. You need to clean yourself up so you can go back to God. And until you finish doing that, you need to hide from Him. (This is what Adam and Eve did.)

That doesn’t work. It will never work.

Do you realize that one of the central messages of Christianity is that we will never be able to be good enough for relationship with God, and that’s why Jesus had to be good enough on our behalf?

Rather, what God wants from you is for you to be with Him, and so when you sin you realize: “Oh, I’m not being with God in the right way right now; this has created distance between Him and I!” And then, because you understand that God wants you to be with Him, you go running back to Him.

Do you see it? When your starting point is obedience, when you sin, you run from God. When your starting point is being with Him, when you sin, you run to God.

(Side note: This is also the correct way to understand the biblical concept of “the fear of God.” It is shunning anything that takes you away from right relationship with Him, and causes you to run to Him, and not away from Him. That’s a consistent way to understand both Old and New Testament usages of “the fear of God.”)

What about ministry? (My job is to train for future missionaries, so this is a very relevant question for a lot of my students.)

If God wants from you being a good evangelist or minister, then you better figure that out, and not come to Him until you do! But if you understand that God wants you to be with Him, and with Him in a way that enables and encourages others to be with Him, then you’ll enter into ministry with Him.

You won’t show up to the home of an Afghani family you’re sharing with seeking to somehow prove yourself to God. Rather, you’ll be talking with God as you cross the door to their home: “How do You want to reveal Yourself to these people?”

Conclusion

The God of the Bible is a God Who is seeking out relationship. He so deeply desires relationship that He sent His Son to live, die, and be raised again to pave the way for people to be with Him.

How quickly we can forget or misunderstand the character of God!

If the God you serve is cold, distant, and demanding, I want to suggest, as gently as possible and as firmly as necessary, that you’ve misunderstood what Biblical Christianity has to say about what God expects from humanity.

Reflection

Is that you? Is that a struggle for you, feeling constantly burdened by religious guilt, trying and failing to fix yourself with religious activity?

If so, bring yourself before Him in prayer, as often as needed. Say to Him, “Lord, I want to rightly know You, rightly trust You, and rightly abide with You. Please lead me to know and receive Your love, and to live from a place of being with You, rather than trying to live for You.”

May God bless you as you abide with Him.

Resources for Further Study

If you’d like to learn more on this topic, there’s a lot of good material out there.

I’d personally recommend “With” by Skye Jethani. This book was used by God to remind me of all this (after I had already taught this for years) when I was stuck in a religious rut.