“Performance is too easy to fake.”

A thought by Kyle Idleman, (2015-10-01) from his book, The End of Me: Where Real Life in the Upside-Down Ways of Jesus Begins (Kindle Location 752). David C. Cook. Kindle Edition. (Click on the title of the book to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)

That is why we work so hard at it. That is how all of us on the outside are judged. But Kyle says, “God looks on the heart, the true measure of who we are.”

He goes on, “Here’s the great danger of performance-based faith. Once we begin to receive those rounds of public applause for all our wonderful accomplishments, we start to believe the charade. We replace the heart with the hands.”

He continues, “Bible-time Pharisees were so good with rules and pious acts that they became legends in their own minds. Yet it wasn’t real. The Messiah stood before them, invisible to their eyes. The needs of the hungry and the sick, all around them, didn’t register. The things they cared about didn’t intersect with the things God cares about. People loved and admired the Pharisees, so the Pharisees loved and admired themselves. They bought their own hype and missed the greatest miracle in human history.”

And we may too. Jesus looks at things totally different. Here is what he says, “God blesses those who are humble, for they will inherit the whole earth. (Matt. 5: 5 NLT)” As Kyle says, “Jesus says the way up is down. Greatness is humility.”

Humility. Kyle says, “There is no substitute for humbling yourself before God. The humble heart pleases God. The humble cry invites him to demonstrate his power. Was Jesus really saying something new? Actually the Scriptures spoke early and often about that: Psalm 18: 27 says, ‘You save the humble but bring low those whose eyes are haughty.’ Proverbs 3: 34 says, ‘He mocks proud mockers but shows favor to the humble and oppressed.’ And in Isaiah 66: 2, God said, ‘These are the ones I look on with favor: those who are humble and contrite in spirit.’ In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is underlining a truth established from the beginning. It seems like a reversal only because we have turned things in the wrong direction.”

So who are we striving to please, the crowd or God?

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