The Well of Achievement

Okay, so a few weeks back we started a series called Never Going Back.

And the basic idea of this is really simple.

We don't want to live looking backwards, we want to go forward.

And last week we started talking about this amazing story in John chapter 4, the story of the woman at the well.

John 4 · chapter mention

This woman goes to this well to get water every single day, and she meets Jesus there one day.

And Jesus says to her, Hey, I can give you living water.

I can give you something that makes you never thirst again.

He's using uh this well and water as a metaphor for the Holy Spirit, really, that he gives us that fills us in a way we've never been filled before.

And he has a conversation with this woman, and basically he employs her, he implores her to not keep going back to those things that she's always gone to that always leave her wanting.

We have a tendency to do that as people.

We always go back to things that they always seem to fail us, but yet we keep going back.

Like, why do we do this?

Jesus wants us to stop going back to those old wells, so to speak, and to go forward and to go forward with him.

Quick thing though, uh I guess a correction from last week, maybe an apology would be a better, a better phrase, as like an illustration.

Early in the message last week, I used uh I used LaCroix as an example of something that I keep going back to, even though I don't really like it, it never really satisfies me.

My wife loves LaCroix, and she's always getting me to drink a new flavor that she gets from the grocery store, and every time I drink one, I'm like, yep, still don't like it.

Why do I keep trying this when I know I don't like it?

And so, in jest, I made a joke last week.

I said, you know, maybe LaCroix is French for the crap.

And turns out a quick Google search would have done me wonders because LaCroix is actually French for the cross.

And uh, you know, yeah, as a pastor, I yeah, whatever.

Um I don't speak French, my apologies.

Uh pardon my French, I guess.

And uh here's the deal.

I'm changing my tone on LaCroix now.

Now that I know that it means the cross, I said last week, don't drink LaCroix, stay away from it.

It's it's it's not good.

No, no, no, no, no.

The Bible says you should take up your cross daily, and so drink one every day from now on, drink one every day.

I think it's it's what God would want, you know.

Joking, obviously.

Okay, so that aside, look, we uh we have a tendency to just go back to the same old stuff.

And I talked last week about the well of self, that we just go back to self-fulfillment, self-reliant, relying on ourselves, self-confidence.

We're always trying to trust our own strength to get us through, and it always leaves us wanting.

We need to leave the well of self and move forward with Jesus.

Fred, you're gonna talk about a different well today.

What do you have for us?

Well, when you called me and asked what I'd like to talk about on the old well, and you even said, Hey, how about take a couple days, pray about it, get back with me?

I went, No, I already know what it is.

Because it's a well that has haunted me, has called me, harassed me most of my whole life.

And in reality, I know it haunts a lot of you as well.

And it's that whole business of performance.

That we have to define our lives by our accomplishments, by being good enough.

And there's certainly reasons we in our culture are raised in that way, but I want us to consider today how very destructive that can be to our soul if we think it's how it defines us.

Now, I probably, Justin, have you ever experienced that?

Or you probably as a pastor, you probably don't ever experience anything like that.

But no, I I I have absolutely I I grew up um pretty determined to win.

That was a big push, you know, and it was part of my family.

We were a pretty competitive family, you know.

But like uh, for example, in high school, and this is not not pride, I promise, but like I was the valedictory in my class, I was the student uh president of the student body, um captain of the basketball team.

And all of those things, it uh if I look back, a lot of that stuff, it wasn't necessarily what I I wanted to do, it wasn't really what I had a passion for.

It was just I I had this unhealthy need to perform, to accomplish, and uh and it held me back.

It it stole a lot of joy, it got me really sidetracked.

So yeah, I get it.

Yeah.

Well of accomplishment.

Yeah.

It it's it affects all of us, and I'm suspect we all have our stories.

Uh let me give you a bit of uh my story.

Uh I was the youngest of three, the only son, and the nickname my dad had me for me was Champ.

And I suspect many people would prefer that nickname over many others that you may have been called by your dad.

But Champ is, of course, short for champion.

And I very quickly learned that I had to be the champion at everything.

Now, sure, when we're small and we're learning the difference between good and bad, and we we recognize there's rewards if we're good and we get punished if it's bad, okay, sure, there's there's a necessity of learning those dynamics.

But realize how, if we don't understand that there's other things in life, that we begin looking at school and realizing it's all about our grades.

And then as school goes on and we get into sports, it's all about performing in sports.

And then extracurricular activities and how well we do in that.

And then that kind of performance aspect gets woven into the understanding of what we have to do to perform in college, what we have to do in the military, what we have to do in our jobs, because we're always evaluated.

And in my background, going to a place like the U.S.

Naval Academy, I mean, it was woven into the fabric of every moment of our lives because we had fitness reports.

They were formal evaluations by our senior uh classes uh not even the classmates, a senior in the uh in the academy.

And we were evaluated and our opportunities came as a result of that evaluation.

What were we evaluated on?

How we compared to everybody else, and what were our achievements?

If you come to believe that that's the defining mark of your life, it gets a hold of your soul and it starts to tear it down, and it plays itself out in so many places in life.

Justin, as you know, I was uh trained a lot in the issues of leadership.

I just thought it'd be fun to look up what they are saying about leadership today.

I got on social media just two days ago and found the first definition of leadership was this guiding others in a direction that leads them feeling empowered and accomplished.

Not accomplishing tasks, but they feel accomplished.

How sad is that?

That we have to, in our culture, seem to drive people to understand that their own sense of value is by what we do.

That we can feel good about ourselves if we accomplish something, that we have to do things and make things and create things and collect things and keep track of our daily list to make sure we accomplish everything and we can feel good about it ourselves at the end of the day.

Now, now please don't misunderstand.

Yes, it's good to have a little list sometimes each day to keep make certain we keep we don't forget our priorities, to manage our time and so on.

But when we use it to define life and our sense of value, we're on a very slippery slope.

I want to suggest to you that that slippery slope includes if we do very, very well, then it's all about abundance and collecting, whether it's money or whether it's our stock portfolio or whether it's accomplishments from work, the checks in the box, the next job, and then we begin defining what we're gonna do next, not by the how it affects our family, but by what's the next job offer I have to take for my career.

So that slippery slope, if we're doing well, it gets us into the area of wrestling with the abundance.

But if we aren't doing well, then it causes us to define ourselves as a failure.

And then we end up fearing that failure because we don't think we're good enough.

Or we point the finger at someone else who fails and says, they're not good enough.

To be honest with you, it was only about uh 15, 18 years ago when for the first time I heard a friend of mine in a message challenge people about how they view failures.

And were they able through faith to make them successful failures?

And I'd never heard those words put together again.

That failure isn't how we define ourselves, it's how we learn and grow and become better at whatever it is we're seeking to do.

But how often do we instead fear failure so much that we're driven by it?

The scripture passage that I want us to look at first is one that that illustrates this, I think, in a huge way.

And it's about King Saul in the Old Testament.

It comes out of 1 Samuel chapter 13, and remarkable story because Saul has the is the chosen first king of the people of Israel, and his job is to lead the battles so that the nation can be formed, those twelve tribes can become a united nation.

1 Samuel 13 · chapter mention

And what a what a privilege to be called by God to take on this responsibility.

But I want to pick up the story at 1 Samuel chapter 13, uh, and uh it's verse 8.

1 Samuel 13 · chapter mention

Saul waited before the battle started for seven days for Samuel, as Samuel had instructed him earlier.

But Samuel didn't come.

Saul realized that his troops were rapidly slipping away, so he demanded, Bring me the burnt offering and the peace offerings, and Saul sacrificed the burnt offerings himself.

Now, a little backdrop to this story.

Samuel is the prophet, with no the prophet who had actually anointed and called Saul to be the first king.

He had a huge responsibility, Samuel did, to be the one who listened to God and then spoke God's word to the people.

Saul had been chosen by Samuel to do this work, by God, through Samuel, and Samuel had said, I'll be there in seven days and I'll offer the sacrifice.

Saul decided he was not going to wait any longer, and he was gonna offer it himself.

In other words, for Saul, accomplishing the task was more important than waiting on God or waiting on Samuel.

He may have been the king, but he did not have the authority of the prophet.

He did not have the authority of that priestly role.

So, sadly, the story continues.

Just as Saul was finishing with the burnt offering, Samuel arrived.

Saul went out to meet him and welcomed him, but Samuel said, What is this that you have done?

The prophet was shocked to think that Saul would presume that he could offer the sacrifice, that he had that authority.

Think about what it shows Samuel about Saul's heart.

He wants to complete the task, manipulate God, make sure he has the empowering, and go forth and win the battle for his name.

It revealed everything about his heart because he was driven by performance.

He was driven to accomplish.

And unfortunately, it revealed a heart that was driven for self.

Saul then gives excuses when he's he's called on it.

He's, I saw my men scattering it from me.

You didn't arrive when you said you would.

So I said, the Philistines are ready to march.

I haven't even asked for the Lord's help, so I felt compelled to offer it myself before you came.

Wow.

Isn't it interesting that even when we're caught, when we're driven by performance, we want to make excuses.

That it wasn't my fault.

I was just doing what I knew I needed to do.

And it was wrong.

Samuel proclaims in verse 13 how foolish you've not kept the command the Lord your God gave you.

Had you kept it, the Lord would have established your kingdom over Israel forever.

But now your kingdom must end, for the Lord has sought out a man after his own heart.

The Lord has already appointed him to be the leader of the people because you have not kept the Lord's command.

Oh, that's too bad.

No, the consequences are huge.

When we're driven by accomplishments, when we're driven by performance, it's a polluted water that pollutes our relationship with God, it destroys our soul, it pollutes relationships with others as well.

Consider the consequences here.

Samuel says, You are a fool.

Now understand in the Hebrew scripture in the Old Testament, people either had faith or they were considered fools.

It isn't have faith or your faith needs to grow, or have faith, or you don't have faith.

It's have faith or you are a fool.

In Hebrew, there were five words they used in the Old Testament that are all for our English word, fool.

It's a fool who doesn't believe God is real.

It's a fool who doesn't follow the commandments, it's a fool who lives for himself.

A fool because they don't understand truth.

Listen to what Saul lost because he played the fool.

He lost his entire kingdom.

Do you know if he had been faithful, seeking God, waiting upon God, seeking to do God's will as helped to be interpreted through the prophet Samuel, we may have been saying that the Messiah was the son of Saul.

We might have been saying that that Saul was the one that we want to follow.

We might have been reading the Psalms written by Saul and his heart for God.

But no, he's completely removed.

And in just another couple chapters, young David is chosen to be the next king.

Saul is by this point is so fearful he has to try to destroy David over and over and over again because he's trying to keep his sense of who he is by defining life by his accomplishments, by what he has, rather than seeking God.

When we're driven by our accomplishments, it reveals a heart condition that's lacking.

I have seen it throughout my ministry, people outside the church and sadly, people inside the church.

Where people, even doing ministries within the church, if we're not very, very careful, we're trying to get ahead, getting more authority, defining our perspective in life by what we have or the people we influence, uh, rather than the privilege of living in relationship with God.

You ever run across that?

Yes.

In fact, I'm just sitting here like this is good.

This is one of those messages that feels like someone's kind of hit me across the face, you know what I mean, with a piece of wood, which I like uh weirdly, but but no, seriously, um it's so easy to immediately start to justify yourself based on what have you accomplished, what have you done.

You know, you you have this, I I probably have like a lot of people a list in the back of my mind that I I feel I feel okay with who I am because I've done this and I've done this well, and I'm a good this or a good that.

Um, and and that's not at all what's supposed to define us.

And I think what's interesting as you're talking about Saul is that he was so obsessed with with David, he was constantly comparing himself to others.

And so that whole accomplishment-driven, performance-driven thing, it it leads you, uh you sabotage yourself.

You do because the second someone comes along and they're accomplishing something great, you can't handle it.

You can't be excited for them.

You can't be, you know, you just can't do it, and it just it destroys you.

So yeah, no, this is uh this is a message I need to hear.

So I'm glad I'm standing right where I'm at.

Well, it's uh I I hate to put you on the spot like that, but I see, we all need to be put on the spot because if we're not careful, we are defining our life by what we do, even if it's in ministry, where we decide to do something ourselves rather than build a team, rather than work as part of the body of Christ, by recognizing that whatever gifts and abilities we have are for the common good, as Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians chapter 12.

1 Corinthians 12 · chapter mention

He says, all the gifts are given for the common good.

The only reason we have any abilities as all is so others will be blessed, but we decide we've got to get the task done and we're gonna do it ourselves.

And often we make a mess of it.

Why?

Because we're doing something that God doesn't want us to do, and we're robbing others of the pleasure of doing it for God.

Just because we have to do it ourselves.

In fact, and Jocelyn, we haven't talked about this before.

I don't believe in our conversations, but I found in the journey that except for positions like pastor or worship leaders or otherwise, if someone holds a ministry for three years, they probably own it.

It's their turf, and don't question it.

And even if they don't mean to, people realize, oh no, that's that's so-and-so's job, that's so-and-so's job.

We can't go there because that's what they do.

And we all define ourselves by what we do rather than the privilege of being in the body together.

Yeah, we get kind of territorial.

We sure do.

Yeah.

Now, all of that is that slippery slope of driven by performance and and that fear of failure that uh we better just get it done, get the task done, get her done, as we say here in the South, rather than living for God, living for his pleasure.

But Jesus challenged the other end of that slippery slope with the business of having been successful in tasks, having gotten ahead, having accumulated things, and we see that, and it's very similar language, but we see that in Luke chapter 12.

Luke 12 · chapter mention

Some men were coming along and having conversation with Jesus, and one of them called from the crowd and said, Hey teacher, please tell my brother to divide our father's estate with me.

And Jesus replied, Friend, who made me a judge over you to decide such things as that?

Then he said, Beware, guard against every kind of greed.

Life is not measured by how much you own.

Do you hear what he's saying?

Even if we've achieved a great deal, even if our performance criteria, we've got all the evaluations done, we've got all the work done, we're feeling really good about ourselves.

Everybody loves us because we've achieved all this mountaintop of money or status or fame.

And Jesus says, be real careful.

True life is not measured by that.

He goes on and tells the parable, famous parable of about a rich man who had a fertile farm and produced fine crops.

He said to himself, What should I do?

I don't have room for all my crops.

Then he said, I know, I'll tear down my barns and build bigger ones.

Then I'll have room enough to store all my wheat and other goods.

I'll sit back and say to myself, My friend, you have stored enough for years to come.

Now take it easy, eat, drink, and be merry.

But God said to him, Here it is, you fool.

You will die this very night.

Then who will get everything you've worked for?

Jesus uses that language.

And in the parable, he uses God using that language, you are a fool.

You've decided to be driven by performance, by what you've been able to accomplish.

You've been driven by things that are not of God.

You are not being driven by grace.

You know, I've been challenged by this my whole life.

Forty years ago, I was starting seminary, and uh I was there feeling really good.

I'd had a good career in the military, uh, I had I had done well.

You hear my, hear me, hear me?

It's it's there.

And I I'm sitting in those first few weeks of school and then attending the the worship services midweek, and I'd gone up for a communion service and come back to and was sitting there just having some quiet prayer, and I had a vision.

And the vision was that there was this huge set of stairs, like pyramids, in front of me.

Uh the each step was like six feet tall, and as a guy who was only five, eight, I had to reach way up to get to those steps and pull myself with all my strength to get up to that lever, that level, and then just kind of collapse.

And then start the next step and the next step and the next step.

Why was it so significant?

Because up at the top was standing Christ.

Face like the sun, shining in all brilliance.

I just wanted to get to Christ.

And I'm struggling and I'm struggling and I'm struggling, and in this vision, Jesus reached all the way down those stairs, grabbed me in his arms, and pulled me up into his presence.

And as he was doing that, I realized he could have reached all the way down to the bottom.

That's the mystery of grace.

We will never gain anything by defining our relationship with God by what we do.

Our walk with God is defined by his grace.

It doesn't mean we do nothing, but what we're doing is in response to the love and the grace that extends to us, not to earn his favor.

In the message that I had this morning in my daily broadcast, I invited people to consider a little girl who grows up, knowing that she has to perform because her dad is going to judge her if she doesn't.

And she is only under the favor of her father when she does things well.

How hard that is for her.

What a burden that is for her.

And yet.

Just down the street are a couple girls who are so loved by their dad that they know it that the definition of their life is the love of their father.

And then what they do is out of joy because they're living in the love and want to please dad just to bless him as he has blessed them.

So too, I find that over and over again in relationships of people defining their relationship with God the Father.

They feel the heavy burden of trying to be good enough to please God and are never good enough, always beating themselves up.

What a sad thing when Christians beat themselves up.

You fool.

You're walking away from grace.

The Lord loves us first.

We must never forget that first love.

And then what we do is a result of the wonder of living in his love.

Isn't it interesting that Paul, in all the things that Paul accomplished, the Apostle Paul, in all the things he accomplished, he said, as he started that great verse of 1 Corinthians 13, all about love.

He gave us the 1 Corinthians chapter 12, last verse.

1 Corinthians 12 · chapter mention

And what did he say?

I will show you the most excellent way.

And it's not the way of working hard and achieving a lot and showing God how wonderful you are when you have all your trophies and awards.

It's being patient, being kind, not insisting in your own way.

It's being increasingly each day like Jesus.

My prayer is that all of us will figure out during this time of waiting, this COVID-19 struggle, that we aren't defined by what we do.

In fact, many of us can't do the things we would like to do or did do.

But rather than waiting until we can rush back to that old well of defining our life by what we do, that's polluted water and it will destroy our souls.

Maybe, just maybe, if we listen enough during this forced time of waiting, that we'll hear God saying, I love you.

I died for you.

Come unto me, all who tribal and heavy laden.

I will refresh you, and then we can live relaxed and in the joy of the love of Christ.

So that's the well I've wrestled with my whole life.

One final story if I got a minute.

Yeah.

One final story.

I had a very difficult time of ministry in 2005 and 2006.

I told you about it before, Justin.

It was when the church split, and uh people weren't there, money wasn't there, really struggling, really feeling bad about myself.

Then I get an invitation in the mail because I have been named Who's Who in America.

And you know what I did to feel good about myself?

I sent in that money so my name could be registered, and I got the plaque to hang on the wall.

Because I thought, even if I'm everybody else has decided I'm a loser, I'm feeling good about myself.

I got that in the mail.

I looked at it and went, what a fool.

I will never put this up on the wall.

I shared with my wife, Jill, what do I do with this?

She said, Well, just you know, hold on to it.

I put it in the bottom drawer of my dresser and thought, whatever.

COVID-19 comes along just this past week, cleaning out things, moving my workout gear, and I came across this box and I went, What is this box?

And as soon as I picked it up, I saw the little return address, who's who, and I went, You fool.

And I threw it in the trash.

I do not want my family thinking that I'm defined by what I do.

I do not want to be defined by what I do.

When I stand before the king, all I want to be able to talk about is the glory and wonder of the one who died for us and rose again.

So, folks, don't go back to the old well of performance.

This time of quiet, let's commit to listening to the Lord, realizing how much he loves us, and then doing whatever we're called to do to bless others, to bless him.