Stop trying, start freely and openly surrendering the misaligned areas of your life to God.  Christianity is not about trying harder, or being good enough or even about building your patience through perseverance.  These things we want changed require an expert physician, a healer who may transform past occurrences into future successes.  They require the only one capable of forgiving our sin and removing its stain to allow a rebirth.  I am not patient, but the Lord is teaching me patience.  I have some frustration issues but I know that the Lord is covering me with His Love and removing my desire to control every outcome.  I am often incapable of forgiving my enemies and those who have hurt me yet strangely as the Lord works in my spirit at some point my grudges, upset and unforgiveness disappear.  That is the Spirit of Almighty God at work in each believer, transforming, softening up fallow ground making us more like Him.

What then am I to do as a “good” Christian if not deeds?  This is the most difficult part for human beings to grasp.  We are so captured by the world’s idea of success being tied to performance that we bring this concept into the churches even requiring others to rise to our own poor understanding.  Eternity is not about the things that I do.  It is about the things that “HE HAS ALREADY DONE”.  Certainly we are being sanctified to spend eternity with a Holy God but that is a process accomplished through belief, surrender and works of the Spirit of God, not by us.  Yes, I must stand in good courage fully rooted in the knowledge of the presence of God in my life, but I am not meant to win any battle because the battles we fight are with powers and principalities over which we personally have no impact.  Hallelujah they have been defeated by Jesus and are subject to His authority that dwells in each of us.  So, if we remind them whom we serve, pulling the two-edged sword of His Word they must flee, but that has nothing to do with my works only my understanding, faith and walk.

Yes, the Lord has given me directives, tasking and objectives but they are His objectives, His outcomes, His Plans, not my own.  Therefore I am absent responsibility for the outcome only the attendance and surrender.  He will complete that which He first started in each of us.  He is steadfast, righteous and faithful.  He loves you I hope that you know that.  No, I hope that you get it way down deep inside where it really matters.  For words like hope, faith and love don’t require evidence or knowledge akin to man’s intelligence or legal support.  Let me demonstrate.  Do you love your Father and your Mother?  You say, of course.  Prove it.

Yes, I know God loves me.  Yes, I do what He wants me to do because I love and respect Him.  I am not looking for a crown, but He will give me one, or perhaps more.  I am not looking for a house, though He will give me a mansion.  I am not looking for this life to last forever, though He HAS GIVEN ME ETERNITY.  I am not perfect, but He is shaping to me in His perfect image.  I try because I want to not because it earns me anything.  I want to please my Father, that is natural for a loving son.  My job is to love Him and love you.  Loving you enough to tell you how to be set free from sin and death.  Loving you enough to introduce you to our Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.  Loving you enough to give you what I have been given, freeing you from what you have mistakenly thought that you need to do.  I cannot earn a place in heaven, I have been given one.  Praise the name of God, through Christ Jesus I pray.