Years ago, I took a personality test that was designed to reveal various components of my persona that could be leveraged for professional success. According to this test, one way that I add value to an organization is through “responsibility.” This was not entirely surprising to me as I tend to stay up to date on my tasks and projects. However, what was stated next caused me pause. According to the test results, I had such a high degree of responsibility that I might have the tendency to take on things that weren’t under my purview. In other words, I tended to feel responsible for things that weren’t my responsibility.
While the test may be right and I am inclined to do this in my professional roles, I think this is a tendency that many more people face when it comes to our relationship with God and how we conduct our life. We wrongly think that we are responsible for creating the future we dream of or having the relationships that we desire. Tempted to assume responsibilities that aren’t meant for us, we fret and worry over what the future holds. We may even think that we can manipulate circumstances to ensure that things will turn out the way we want. Worse yet, we may attempt to manipulate relationships to accomplish the same purpose.
The reality is that God has given us some responsibilities. He has called us to love Him and to love people. However, although these are responsibilities that are explicitly stated, I find that very few Christians are fretting over whether they are doing either of these things most effectively. Instead, we tend to worry about whether we have all the right answers to apologetics questions or whether our evangelism presentation was sufficiently polished. We worry about whether the decision we are making will lead to the future we want, or whether our kids will get every advantage in education or sports. We are anxious about finances, concerned about politics, and uneasy about an unclear future. In other words, we are bearing the burdens of our future instead of trusting it to the God Who is sovereign over all.
The problem with this is not only that we aren’t relying on God (which is a big problem), but that we are creating a myriad of other difficulties by trying to do a job that rightly belongs to Him. We are not equipped to take on these burdens, and when we attempt to do so, miserable failure ensues. And even in the moments when we think we do have some control, it doesn’t usually take long to realize that it was an illusion. If, as Matthew 6:27 states, we can’t add even an hour to our life through worry and fear, what makes us think that it accomplishes anything else?
The really sad thing is that often we convince ourselves that we are doing a good thing when we take on these concerns. “We’re just being prudent,” we say, and being prudent is certainly a virtue that Scripture extols. Or, “I just want things to be as good as they can be” we think, not trusting that God is far wiser in determining what is “good.” Additionally, if our thoughts are consumed with circumstances over which we have no control, than our thoughts aren’t centered on God. Consequently, if our thoughts, and our lives, aren’t centered on God, eventually the futility of trying to control the future will catch up with us, and we will realize we wasted precious time fretting over things we can’t control that we could have spent loving and serving Him And if we continue in our attempts to take on responsibilities that we were never intended to own, we will neglect the responsibilities we do have – to love and honor our Savior and to be a blessing to those He has called us to serve.
