God Doesn’t Lose His Identity When You Dutifully Serve Him

I discovered something foolish on the internet this morning and thought you might like to know about it too. I collect these kinds of little sayings, for my own personal delight. Mostly I keep them buried in an electronic file so as not to embarrass or alarm anyone, but this one is too good not to share. Ready?

Printed in big white letters on a background of dark red leaves we find these immortal words:

When MINISTRY becomes a JOB and
PRAYER becomes a DUTY the
PRESENCE OF GOD loses its BEAUTY
and the POWER OF GOD loses its
IDENTITY

Um, that would be a no. Show me, as someone says all the time, where on earth this is in the Bible. Then maybe I’ll lay aside a portion of my wroth…no? Can’t find it? Exactly, because it’s not in there and is also not true, and is also a vapid, guilt inducing mediocrity that you don’t need in the new year. Let’s take it in order, so as to be calm and rational and not fly off the handle in a rage.

First of all, we aren’t exactly in the kind of economy that makes it sensible to go knocking things like “jobs.” Jobs are good things. Not only do they help you to eat, but they are honorable and worthy. Occasionally some human people have the incredible fortune of doing a job that they both want to do and feel very happy doing. Their work fills them with a sense of satisfaction. It might be hard, but they know it is worthwhile, and at the end of the day, they experience gratitude for the gift of useful, interesting, and virtuous labor.

See, “working” and “having a job” are good objectively, in and of themselves, for their own sake. Moreover, some jobs that allow you to serve and care for others might even be counted as “ministry.” How much more, if you were to actually have some kind of ministry as your job, happy would you be? So happy, because you might be able to feed yourself and your family and at the same time devote your whole life to building up Christ’s kingdom.

There doesn’t need to be a wall (hahaha) between the idea of work and the idea of ministry. Ministry is work. Having a job is good. Sure, human work fell into barren drudgery along with Adam, and so there are all kinds of sadnesses and difficulties associated with the sweat of your brow, but you who are in Christ can embrace a redeemed and gracious labor. You can offer up every single task, whether menial or exalted, as praise.

You know what’s not helpful? Feeling bad about something so useless. “Oh my word,” you think as you struggle to brush the snow off you car in the backside of dawn without coffee to go to a hospital to pray for a worried person about to have surgery and who hasn’t had anything to eat or drink either because the medical establishment always wants to increase the suffering of the anxious, “is this ministry a job? Am I literally working right now? Oh no!” Later you cash in your meager but hard won pay check and beat your head against your ice-cold steering wheel for being so low as to desire filthy lucre. Give me a break. Having a job and even having a job in ministry is a good thing. We carry on…

…prayer becomes a DUTY…
are you for real? So jobs are bad, and duties are bad? You know what’s actually bad? People who don’t discipline themselves painfully for the sake of others in the kingdom of God. Prayer is something that Jesus himself commands. “Pray like this,” he says and then gives the actual words he wants us to use because he doesn’t want us to have to make up a bunch of dumb prayers that aren’t worth the breath we spend on them. Later Paul, taking up the point, lists lots and lots of people to pray for, and circumstances to pray about. It’s like…it’s like Jesus and Paul think you should be praying…wait…I can’t remember, was it only when you feel your wondrous spirit well up within you? Oh no! IT WAS ALL THE TIME. That sounds like discipline to me, even a Duty. But maybe they were wrong. Maybe you should just do stuff whenever your feelings take over. Maybe you should never ever ever bend your will and your time and your broken inclinations toward the divine command to Pray Always.

Ok, what’s next.
So if ministry is a job and prayer is a duty then the Presence of God actually loses its Beauty….
Really? First of all, what do you, oh meme maker, mean by the Presence of God? Because, as the shorter catechism for young children says, God Is Everywhere. Or, as the Psalmist points, when you are trying your darnedest to get away from the presence of the Lord, If you Go Even Down to Sheol (whether the basement or death or whatever feels like death) he is there. If you go up to the heavens, he is there. Like home, wherever you are, there he is. Sometimes it’s kind of a drag. And we could certainly argue about how beautiful exactly it is to be chased down by a God who, one feels, ought to have better things to worry about—check with Jonah. In fact, aesthetics isn’t really the main point of the presence of God, although it does come into it.

On the other hand, I like the aesthetic question, so let’s go there for a minute. Do you really think that God’s beauty is dependent on how you feel when you are praying or doing work? Isn’t it rather that difficult reality that when you do something you don’t want to, for the sake of another person, you see the glory of God in the middle of your pain and suffering? If you are genuinely looking for beauty, don’t you immediately look at the cross? That place where duty, work, suffering, and love all meet in a cataclysm of hope?

Oh, but I get it. The presence of God is not the alien, objective, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent verity of God’s true self, revealed in time and space historically, in the scriptures, and through the true and living power of the Holy Spirit who abides spiritually within those very persons who place a true and lively hope in the work and person of Christ. That’s not it at all. It’s actually how you feel when you’re “praying” and “stuff.”

And now we come to the cream on top of the puff. The meme maker posits that when you don’t feel it, the Power of God loses its Identity.

What on earth does that even mean? What is the power of God’s “identity?” I understand each of the individual words, but when you put them together they become, like so much of the internet, utterly worthless. The power of God doesn’t have some kind of separate identity. Is the meme maker thinking of a life force? Is the power of God like a chakra? Or Darth Vader? Or what?

God doesn’t lose anything when you show up to pray and serve him, no matter your feelings, your inclinations, your intentions, your sorrow, your discouragement, your sense of futility, your anxiety, your hope, your joy, or your desire. If you actually, out of the discipline and labor of your life, go to him in prayer, and then show up and do a job, however small, his glory and beauty and identity are more visible to the world, not less.

Let me rewrite it, so that it makes better sense.
“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”