Count for You
Feed me, and, somehow, make my obedience count for You. (from Brendan Liturgy, Part XVI in Celtic Daily Prayer)
Like many people I know, I struggle with following others, even following God. I want to be a unique, one-of-a-kind person who leads the way for others. Rather than being dependent, I want to make my own way and be in control. However, my independence rarely leads to nourishment. Instead it leaves me hungry, emptied, and wanting more as I try to nourish myself.
When I do seek to follow God and hear Jesus’ call, I look for things that I can do and that are in my control. Have a quiet time. Attend church. Work well. I want to bake the bread, so to speak. Eventually this becomes a way to put the focus back on me. If I can do them and be successful, then others will accept and follow me. It’s not about counting for Jesus, but for me.
Whether in the feeding or the following, I’m trying to get sustenance from my work and ways. I come from a long line of German and Swedish people who did not want to ask for help. Proud that we could provide for ourselves and help others. Yet, these ways continue to leave me hungry and empty. I can’t live up to the expectations of others. Or my own.
However, God doesn’t require us to come to him full. In fact, we can only come needy and begging. I can’t obey on my own, so I must look to him to provide the sustenance that allows me to follow. Jesus knows that we long for food that satisfies. Therefore, he gives himself as that life bread and that living water, the central source of nourishment. With the psalmist I long to say: “How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” (Psalm 119:103), so that I may truly take up the nourishment that Jesus freely offers and not hold onto my measly scraps.
Without allowing God to become first in my life, any of the tasks I do are nothing. If I Iean into work to show others that I’m the one worthy of being followed, that tasks I do for God gives me standing, then I am putting myself in a place of false control. Of making my work count through my effort. As God spoke to Hosea, “For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings” (Hosea 6:6). Mercy requires that I trust all my actions to that which is outside of my control, not what I think I can do for God.
Through being fed by Jesus we can walk into a new kind of obedience because it’s not of our own doing, but of his. His obedience led to the cross. That is where we can find the Bread of Life and where we can start walking in a way that truly counts.
