Running nowhere fast?

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” Matthew 11:28

I have owned several several hamsters in my life. I find them fascinating and adorable. I often would sit up at night and watch them running in their wheels over and over and over again, all night long wondering if they know that they are just running in a circle and getting nowhere. They don’t though; they are just happy and content to just run.

I would shake my head at them but in reality I do the same thing. The Christian walk is not easy and although we are not saved by our good works, we often try to strive for them, usually without the help of anyone. Our pride gets in the way and we want to achieve things on our own. We want to steer our own life but instead we find ourselves running as hard as we can and getting nowhere. We are in our own little wheel.

It is our attempt to retain some control in our life but God is saying stop, run to Me and rest in peace knowing that I am in control. Do we listen? No, not usually. We come back with “No God, thanks anyways, but I got this. I can do this on my own. I am going somewhere.” We can’t see that we are in fact going nowhere, running with no end goal in sight because without God’s help, there is no hope that we will achieve anything. Just as the hamster we are stuck in this alternate reality thinking we are on our way to somewhere great, when God is on the outside shaking His head wondering when we will realize we are on a pointless journey to nowhere.

We are all like this, we strive to accomplish things in life and to do good works, but as sinners we can’t ever accomplish them.  Eventually, we get tired in our wheel and try to stop for rest, but we don’t get it by steeping off the wheel, we just stop in the wheel. When that happens, the wheel keeps spinning and we end up falling on our face. We dust ourselves off and get back to work. It is a vicious cycle and one we eventually grow tired of and start thinking… “Why are you doing this God? Why are you setting me up for failure? No matter how hard I try I can’t live up to your standards, I can’t do this!” We start to get discouraged and picture God as this mean almost sadistic person laughing at us as we run in circles and continually fall on our faces, able to help but refusing to.

How easily we can fall into this misinformed, skewed view of God. We need to get out of the fantasy world where God is making your life miserable, and wake up and see the truth! God knew that if He granted me the desire for that perfect image and behavior, my heart would not be one of true worship. Well actually it would be, but it would be one where I worship myself and not Him. We are His creations and He created good works for us and free will, but He knew that we would not be sinless doing them. But He designed it perfectly so that we would have to turn to Him and walk and abide in grace. Because we are sinners and can’t do it on our own, we must rely on God and are forced to come to Him humbled and repentant acknowledging His love, grace and mercy. He made it this way so as to maximize our experience of the fullness of His love, having to be dependent on Him every step of the way.

In this perfect design where we are not perfect and God is the only perfect one, His love is magnified. We decrease, He increases and we find true joy and peace that can only be found in the stillness of resting in Him. We need to trust in Him and accept His grace and mercy as He forgives us sinners fully, because of the sacrifice of His son. This is no cruel sadist, but instead the most tender and merciful redeemer.

And as His redeemed, when we walk in His love, He gains control instead, channeling through us in testimony to the world and in fellowship with one another. That is when the fruits of the spirit start to show up, the good works we try so hard to do ourselves, but they never take center stage as our doing. Jesus should overwhelmingly dominate the spotlight with the radiance that is His grace.

So let us not just stop running in the wheel, but take that step off it and go to Him and finally find the rest and peace in His arms as He holds us. Give Him control of our lives, so we can be free of the trap of the hamster wheel of pride and sin.