PurposefooledExemplo

Like the calf-worshiping Israelites, we love to worship the work of our own hands. We love to see what we can do, and we delight to accomplish and achieve. When we feel like we can’t do anything of value, we get depressed. When we can’t accomplish anything, we feel despair. We feel lost. Maybe we’re not so different from those idol-making Israelites in the desert. Maybe we’re still building the tower of Babel today, just not a physical one.

Why is our need to find our greatness in what we do so strong? Because it’s in our nature. It’s the pattern of sin handed down to us from the garden. When given the choice to let God be the great one or to reach for greatness themselves, Adam and Eve chose the latter. The serpent told them what would happen when they ate the forbidden fruit: “Your eyes will be opened. You will be like God” (Gen. 3:5). The “you” at the center of those sentences was just too tempting.

So just like our first parents and every generation since, we choose to delight in ourselves and in the work of our hands. When we can do great and memorable things, we can take pride in ourselves. When we can do great things, those capabilities give us an identity. But true greatness will never be found in our achievements.

Yet the fact remains: we are made for greatness. We bear the image of the galaxy-designing God. Average just won’t do. Mediocre isn’t enough. Our imago Dei nobility haunts us with longings for grandeur and glory.

How do we reconcile these things? How do we acknowledge that we were made for greatness and resist the urge to look to the works of our own hands? We have to detach our greatness from our doing. We have to detach our value from our vocations. We have to detach our significance from ourselves.

The greatest in the kingdom are not achievers but receivers. Ultimately, our greatness isn’t found in what we can be or do; It’s found in the One Great God and His great activity—His sustaining and saving, His pursuing and empowering, His guiding and giving, and His refreshing and restoring. He made us, sustains us, lived for us and died for us. He conquered death and gave us His Spirit to empower us, and even now He lives as our great high priest and intercessor. Without Him and His activity, we have no breath, no salvation, no hope. Posturing ourselves as servants of the One Great God and as receivers of His great activity is the only way to climb to the top and tap into the glory we were made for.

Prayer

Lord, please set me free from the desire to glorify my own activity, and help me to find my greatness in you. Amen.