Many of us think that God is moved by our behavior. One might think that he’s moved to anger when we make mistakes and when we keep on sinning and we keep on messing up. You know, we mess up every day. Every single day, I make a mistake. I know that beyond a shadow of a doubt. I can spend my time lamenting over my behavior and beating myself up and thinking that God is mad at me. “He’s so disappointed in me. I’m sure he’s shocked by my behavior.” But God knows everything. If you really believe that he’s the beginning and the end and the alpha and the omega, he knew you were going to mess up before you ever did. Amazing.
First of all, we think that he’s moved by us—maybe in a negative way—towards anger or frustrated or disappointed in us. Sometimes when we’re serving or we’re doing really good, we’re performing well, we haven’t made a mistake yet since 8 AM that he’s proud of us or he’s excited or he’s thankful that we’re working for him and working so hard or he’s proud of the way we’re serving.
Some of us might think that God is moved by our prayers. When we beg him and tell him or remind him of his promises, he’s moved; that he decides, “You know what, your prayers are so effective because you’re so righteous. I’m going to go ahead and move on your behalf.”
All of those pretenses—there are many more, but of all those—they’re just all wrong. The truth is that we can’t get any more righteous in Christ. We are the righteousness of Christ and nothing can ever change that. Not our bad behavior, not our bad performance, not our serving, not our good behavior, not our kind gestures, our generosity—nothing can ever change our righteousness. It can’t increase and it cannot decrease. Amazing.
We are the righteousness of Christ. Every prayer we pray is effective. It doesn’t matter if you’re the pastor of a giant church or somebody who works at your local 7-11. Your prayers are as effective as he other one and you know you are the righteousness of Christ and you’re seated at the right hand of God with Jesus. It’s amazing.We are the righteousness, but what moves God is that you said yes to him; that you received the gift of his son; that you have chosen him. He has sought you out, he brought you to him but you said yes. You didn’t have to say yes to God.
You know, since I was a young girl, as long as I can remember, my whole entire life, I know God has been wooing me. For 26 years, I said no. and then one day I finally said “Yes, God. I want to be with you. I want to be your child. I want to know you. I want to know eternal life. I want to know life with you instead of life without you.”
God is moved by our yes. He is in love with our yes. He is moved because we love him and he loves us. He loved us before we ever said yes. He sees you when you have the choice to back off or back away and shrink back, he sees you and he knows what you’re doing. When you say yes, he is moved. He is so thankful and loves you deeply. He has no respect of persons and he loves no one more and no one less.
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