Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Tired of being "good"

People always say "helping people makes you happy." I doubt if it's always true. I was miserable a couple of days ago after helping others and unselfishly giving people what I had wanted...

I prayed to God and asked why it seemed that I was always denied the stuff I wanted either by Him or by myself (coz I am a Christian and I have always try to consider the Golden Rule for my every action.) How come I felt so bad, and I had to work so hard to be a good Christian??

Yesterday, as always, I read Tom Wright's book (I used it for my daily devotional material.) He's talking about 2 Thesslonians 2:13-17.

"All mature Christian thinking has this two-sided nature: God is powerful and will support you, therfore you need to stand firm and hold tight. We easily suppose that, if God is in control, we can relax; or that, if we have to struggle and work hard, it means that God isn't as powerful as we has thought. That misses the point. The way in which God's power is exercised is precisely through the love, the comfort and the teaching of the gospel, which don't work as it were automatically, without our conscious involvement, but which on the contrary stiffen our resolve and energize our flagging spirits. We see exactly the same balance when Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15.10 that he worked harder than the rest-- yet it was not him, but God's grace that was with him."

I was so touched by this immediate answer of my prayer.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I used to feel the same way at times. I came to believe that that feeling is a temptation that leads to a host of other messed up imaginings about ourselves and God. I also realized that my motives for why I was being "unselfish" may not have been entirely acceptable to God. If I'm doing something in order to get something back I want from Him, I may not be being completely selfless after all. That may not be what's going on in your life. But I thought I'd share some of my own history.

aMy said...

Thanks for your sharing. In the past, I did try to be good to get something from Him. Now I just tried to do good to please Him, coz I really wanted to please Him. Occasionally it's really tiring. However, I felt called by God to help people at work. And that's what I'm trying my best to do now.