12/02/2023
Are we approaching our faith through study and hard work to further perfect ourselves each day? Every evening during our nightly prayers do we kneel before God and tell Him of our academic progress? If this is so, and it is all we do, He will speak words similar to these back to us...”Yes, but when I walked in the garden where were you?” or, “As I love you, do you love me?” God wants our journey towards perfection to be more than memorizing scripture, or blind obedience. He wants the true manifestation of our studies to be a loving relationship with Him. Our academic perfection is not His ultimate goal for us.
“Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.”
Philippians 3:12 ESV
I have taught my children many things about life and what it means to be good, and a person of faith, but my greatest joy has always been when they walked with me as I instructed them, not in the lessons themselves. Don’t get me wrong; the instruction time I have spent with each child was precious, but the real goal was never for me to be their teacher, but to enjoy their company as we walked together through our lives of faith. Oswald Chambers describes this in a wonderful way:
“Christian perfection is not, and never can be, human perfection. Christian perfection is the perfection of a relationship to God which shows itself amid the irrelevancies of human life.” - Oswald Chambers
As my children were growing up I would occasionally take them fishing. I would teach them to tie a hook on their line, how to bait it, how to cast their line out, how to fight a fish to shore, and if large enough, how to place it on a stringer, but I didn’t do these things because I thought they would become professional fishermen. I did it because it allowed me to reveal snippets of myself to them in the process. The most enjoyable part of the experience for me was when we sat together on the bank and waited patiently for the bobber to go down. This was a time of conversation and relationship... this was my time with them, just as much, if not more, than their time with me. Fishing trips were never really about catching the fish, after all it would have been much cheaper to have bought our dinner. No, it was about the time we spent together and our relationship with one another.
An interesting result of these trips was that all my kids developed a love for fishing. They liked the challenge of it, and the time in nature, but most of all they loved it because they thought I loved it. We do this with God too. When we are spending time with Him in the classroom of life I hope we don’t confuse our book learning with His true purpose, which is to develop a loving relationship with us. I pray that when we come home at the end of the day, that our trip will have been successful… but even if our stringer is empty, and our hands don’t smell of fish.
My children have grown to adulthood now, and not every lesson was learned, but occasionally one of them will show me a picture of a nice fish they have caught. Although I admire the fish, what gives me the greatest enjoyment in that moment is remembering a little one’s excitement as they reeled in a tiny bass, and the sparkle in their eye as they hugged me when we put it back in the water. You see, it was never about the fish... that was just what opened up the tackle box of our relationship.
God teaches us about commandments, obedience, prayer, faith, and all the nuances of His Word, but He doesn’t do that to make us perfect in them, He does it so that we can walk with Him as we develop our relationship. This is His fishing trip, and it gives us something to share together. It isn’t now, nor was it ever, about simply perfecting ourselves... that is just a manifestation of our relationship; it has always been about being a loving child who wants to be like his Father, and his loving Father adoring this child.
With some parents it is a fishing trip, but it could also be a sewing class, working on cars, a sporting event, playing a musical instrument, how to cook; whatever we choose to use as our tackle box. So don’t get so wrapped up in the lessons that we forget the reason we are there in the first place... the relationship with our child. If we don’t learn another thing, let this be the lesson that both student and teacher learn from God. Let this be the lesson our Heavenly Father teaches us.
“I am called to live in perfect relation to God so that my life produces a longing after God” - Oswald Chambers
Prayer:
Father, I thank you for the lessons you teach me through your Holy Word, but most of all I thank you for the relationship this fosters between us. I thank you for the perseverance you teach me through hardship, but what I value most is feeling your arm around me as I struggle to please you. I thank you for the love you teach me to show my neighbor, but in the end I value your words “this is my beloved child, with whom I am well pleased.” Because your words tell me that in loving others I am pleasing to you. Teach me Father, not to be a fisherman, but to be a fisher of men, so that I can walk with you in this endeavor and find snippets of you all along the way. Let our relationship bloom as you pull lesson after lesson from your tackle box. Never let me confuse the academic perfection of these holy fishing trips with the love they are intended to elicit. At the end of the day Lord, when we walk together, let me be surprised by each tiny fish of perfection that you have taught me to reel in and gently release back into your waters.
“Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’”
Mark 12:29-30 ESV
Rich Forbes