Performance
(Part III of Zadok, the True Minister)
© by Gary W. Crisp
Striving to Perform
What do the following things have in common?
- Playing on a little league team
- Being in an art class
- Interviewing for a job
- Landscaping your lawn
- Decorating your Christmas tree
- Taking your kids clothes shopping
- Participating in a Christmas or Easter pageant
- Preparing a meal for company
- Trying out for cheerleader or the pep squad
- Or, just dressing for Church on Sunday
You may have guessed that each and every activity is (or can be) an area where we want to do our very best. These are areas where excellence generally lends itself, and as we all know: These are also areas of slight, if not great competition. I’ve played on little league teams, as well as church teams; I’ve been in art classes, interviewed for jobs, done landscaping, decorated our Christmas tree...everything except the cheerleading and pep squad thing, and I will tell you: Pride is a factor in all of these activities. Now, contrary to what you might be expecting, I do not believe that all pride is bad. A certain amount of good, honest pride is healthy. Pride in personal hygiene is always nice, and pride in personal appearance is not necessarily a bad thing. Doing our personal best on tests, in school, even on our jobs cannot be deemed as inappropriate.
So, when does pride become a negative thing?
When it hinders our relationship with God, our family or our fellow man. When how we look, what people think of us or how we do something becomes a source of compulsion, then we have “missed the mark”. If we become so driven and so frantic about outward appearances and what others may perceive of us, then we have taken pride one step too far. And in the church, the push for excellence has distressed, frustrated and shipwrecked many. Why is excellence so bad? Excellence, standing alone, is not bad. It’s when we “couch it” in the guise of being a “necessity” for pleasing God and man that we get into trouble.
All parents are supposed to love their children “unconditionally”, even as God does. People outside our families, as we all well know, are not as kind. Once we get “out into the world”, outside the sphere of home and parental covering and love, we see that it’s not so “nice” out there. But God is still the same; He still has His unconditional Love available to us; He still accepts us “in the beloved” (Ephesians 1:6). Nothing has changed with God. It is only our perception that has changed. I like to modify a little colloquialism we’ve all heard, changing “Possession is 9/10ths of the Law” to: “Perception is 9/10ths of our Faith”. What we perceive to be true greatly affects our faith...our faith in God; our faith in man; our faith in life. Perception can hinder us tremendously, if we allow it to rule the competitive side of things. When competition becomes the end-all to our lives, we are in trouble.
I have heard ministers, returning from a monthly ministers’ conference, talking about how they are going to have to do this or that in order to keep up with the other ministers and churches. Why are we so “driven” to compete, especially within the church? The simple answer is one we all tend to overlook: The enemy takes great pleasure in seeing the church divided, and striving for excellence at any cost does just that.
Perception: What Is It? Perception, as defined by Webster, means: The act, process or result of “perceiving”; the ability to perceive; understanding or insight; and perceive means: To become aware of directly by the senses, especially “seeing and hearing”.
Understanding, insight, seeing and hearing...all of these things are necessary to be a healthy, well-balanced Christian. All of those things we mentioned earlier (how we dress, how people perceive us, how we do things) are not that important compared to understanding, insight, seeing and hearing. If I can never understand that I must be “born again”, then I am doomed forever! If I do undertsand that, but never gain any real insight into His Word, His Will or His Ways, then my Christian existence is shallow at best. And what of seeing and hearing? Check out Matthew 11:15; 13:9, 15, 16 & 43; Luke 8:8; 10;23 and 14:35; Mark 8:18; John 12:40. These are but a few references to “seeing” and “hearing”. There are many more, but these are enough to show how important sight and listening are.
When anything hinders or interferes with our vision or hearing in the natural, we go to a doctor, get examined, get glasses or contacts for our sight or a hearing aid for our hearing. Why wouldn’t we do the same in the Spirit? Or do we even know when our sight or hearing is “spiritually impaired”? This is the part of perception that is so very, very important: Knowing when any part of our spiritual man suffers. How can we determine this? Or, more correctly, how does God reveal this to us? What I’ll share next may seem to have little scriptural reference, but if you bear with me I believe you’ll see the value of the following viewpoint.
Is There Joy? Is what we are doing bringing us joy? Whether it be in the church, on a job, or even building our own homepage! When I first decided to create our site, I read an article on building a homepage, and the author summarized with this very practical thought: “If you do not enjoy what you are doing, don’t do it.” In other words, if building a website or homepage was more trouble than it was worth, don’t do it. If you can’t gain pleasure out of something, why do it? Though it may sound a bit harsh to say it, it’s true in the things of God. Why follow Jesus if there’s no joy in it? Why obey God if there’s no satisfaction in it? Not the satisfaction of a job well done, but the satisfaction of pleasing Him (Psalm 40:8; Ps. 119:16, 24, 47 & 92; John 4:34; Romans 7:22). These verses help us gain a perspective on joy. There are many other verses we could look at, but for now these will do.
In Hebrews, 12:2, we see that “Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, Who for the joy that was before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of God.” That, my friend, is a powerful statement. Think about that moment in time, if you will.
His Joy What was His Joy that He saw? Was it being reunited with His Father, having endured the mockings and the cruelty of men here on earth? I don’t think so. Was it having returned to Him His royal, heavenly robes, after travelling this hot, sweaty, dusty world below? I still don’t believe that was it. How about being reunited with all of the heavenly hosts, safe in the comfortable surroundings of angels, seraphim and cherubim? No, because if you’ll recall, they attended to Him while He was here! What, then, could have gripped Him so tightly that He “set His eyes like a flint” (Isaiah 50:4-7; Luke 9:51)?
I believe with all my heart that He, looking down through the ages as well as back at His faithful Old Testament followers, could see you and me and each of us who would one day accept the gift that He gave us at the Cross of Calvary. He knew the price, but He willingly and joyfully paid that price. He understood that the moment of the Debt Being Paid, when He would wipe away “all handwriting and ordinances against us” (Colossians 2:13-15), He would be “temporarily” separated from His Father. That was why He cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken Me? (Matthew 27:46)”.
That was also why the temple vail was ripped in two and the sun was darkened (Luke 23:45). The whole of creation groaned then, and still does (Romans 8:22, 23), for the price heaven paid for our redemption. And Jesus took His Blood to the “lower parts of the earth” (Ephesians 4:9) to display to all in satan’s domain that the Price was Paid! His Blood had paid it. Then He ascended and placed that Precious Blood upon the Heavenly Mercy Seat (Hebrews 9:1-14, 23-28). I know it doesn’t plainly say these things; they are implied. “For the Joy”...that, to me, is such a remarkable idea, and only God could have come up with such a truly wonderful concept.
Our Joy One of the most precious things that suffers in the midst of striving for perfection and the competition it fosters is our joy. It is something we should guard dearly, for “the Joy of the Lord is our Strength!” (Nehemiah 8:10) When we can have joy in our walk with God, all else is at rest. Not some phony, plastic grin plastered across our faces to hide what we really feel deep down inside, but a pure, Holy Spirit-river of joy, bubbling up in us and out from the depths of our spirits.
As we said earlier, “Striving for Excellence” breeds “The Desire to Perform”. And this striving breeds a very competitive spirit, which will ultimately birth within our midst these ungodly offspring: Jealousy and Division. The last portion of this teaching (and the 3rd Problem in the Church), “The Competitive Spirit”, can be found here.
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