“‘Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’” – John 4:13-14

Fresh out of college, a brand new high school teacher, I sat in my bedroom and wrote a list of personal and professional goals for the school year. It is always important to have a goal, something to work towards, something by which we often measure our success. I wrote five goals for myself: a health goal, a relationship goal, a dating goal, a teaching goal, and a spiritual goal. My spiritual goal read, “Spend time with God every day. Pray in between classes. Take time to be quiet with God.” Sounds simple enough, right?

Underneath each of my five goals, I wrote notes to myself about how to best achieve my goal. Under this goal I had written, “What steps will I take if I become passive/lukewarm?” I had neatly highlighted it as if, at some point, I would have the answer to the question. Thinking about it in retrospect, I think I always had the answer, but it seemed too simple, too easy, to be the answer to a question that appeared to be so complex. The best answer I have to this question is one of the best pieces of advice I have ever received. I sat with the children’s pastor at Vintage Church a few years ago and said to him, teary-eyed and lost, “I don’t feel God anymore. I have no desire to pray or come to church or read my Bible. What do I do?” Pastor Nick did not respond with some platitude that might have made me “feel better,” but he responded, instead, by saying, “It doesn’t matter if you feel Him or not. He’s there regardless. Read your Bible even when you don’t feel like it. Come to church even when you don’t want to. Pray all the time even if your prayer is simply, ‘I don’t feel you. Help me.’”

This school year, I went to church every week. I attended my Bible study regularly. I read my Bible sporadically. I prayed when I remembered to (which was not as often as I am willing to admit on the Internet). This is the mark of a lukewarm Christian, a Christian who cares very little about her spiritual well-being. Up until recently, I would have even said this is a bad Christian, a Christian who is less spiritual than other Christians. A goal is something by which we often measure our success. This goal says I have failed. I am not a good follower of God. I am at risk of falling into the ranks of Christians that simply go through the motions, but lack the spiritual drive to put their faith into practice.

This interpretation of my faith is practically laughable. What is a bad Christian when we are all sinners? By what standards are we judging ourselves that constitute us to consider ourselves or others as less perfect Christians? Even the phrase itself, “perfect Christian,” is an oxymoron. By the nature of the Gospel, we can never be perfect. By believing the Gospel, we are willingly admitting that we are terrible, awful people—sinners in need of someone who is perfect to save us. That perfect person is not ourselves. It is Jesus Christ who died on the cross for our horrendous actions so that we may, even though we are not perfect, enter into a relationship—a deep, beautiful friendship—with the only one who is.

I have been reading Galatians for about a week now. For those who know nothing about this book, it is written by Paul to a group of churches in Galatia. The churches were teaching that one must be circumcised to be accepted by God, and Paul wrote to tell them that this was wrong. He wrote this letter to explain that people are not justified (made righteous/clean by God) through works but, rather, through faith alone. Our good works should come as a result of that faith. Timothy Keller, in “The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness,” writes that we should want to do things for God for the joy of doing them for God and not to be able to put them on some spiritual resume. What your resume says will not get you into heaven. Galatians 3:3 speaks to this when Paul says, “Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” The issue of the good Christian versus the bad Christian focuses on being perfected by the flesh rather than the Spirit. It says that we must do things that others can see, things that will cause them to say, “Wow! That person must be really Christian!” This is completely contrary to what God asks of us (Matthew 6:6)!

Paul take this a step further when he writes, “But now that you have come to know God, or rather be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more?” (Galatians 4:9). Now that we know we have been perfected by the Spirit, why do we turn back to look for our satisfaction in the world? God does not let us off the hook for not spending time with Him, for not building our relationship with him. If we have been transformed by the Spirit, we should desire that relationship with God. We should want to be alone with him as we desire to be alone with a best friend or a lover. Instead, we turn to the world; we allow the things in our earthly lives to take precedence over the things in our spiritual lives. This does not make us less than other Christians (or bad Christians or Christians who will be left out of the kingdom of Heaven), but it certainly speaks to the state of our heart. It speaks to the state of my heart.

My heart was in turmoil much of this school year. Although I did not know it at the time, my heart was trying to tell me something: It was thirsty. It was thirsty for time with God, time spent in the Bible, in prayer. We—I—so often try to curb this thirst with other things. I feed my heart professional accomplishments and compliments from others. I don’t allow it to consume what it truly needs. Since the summer began, it has taken huge gulps of quiet time with God. It has read the Bible with more intensity than it has read in years. It has prayed without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17). It has spoken with Biblical love to others, and it has brought me peace in difficult circumstances. What in my heart causes this overwhelming thirst? The Holy Spirit, the part of God He left with us to guide us, does this amazing thing. It cries to us with an empty and unfillable heart until we return to the One who can satisfy our thirst.

The best part? God gladly quenches our thirst. He doesn’t make us earn the thing we are craving. He doesn’t lecture us first. He doesn’t get angry or withhold forgiveness. He pours into our hearts until they are so full that they are spilling over onto other people, allowing us to help Him fill others. A goal that says, “Spend time with God every day. Pray in between classes. Take time to be quiet with God,” is a wonderful goal. But, a goal like this should not be intended to measure our spiritual “goodness.” God is the only one who can measure that and—guess what?—He measured it before you did anything for Him. He measured it when you chose to believe in the Gospel and He said, “I love you, and you are worthy of my kingdom. You don’t have to do anything to earn this love. You don’t have to do anything to earn entrance into my kingdom. You can rest in this truth now. Come and rest with me. Be thirsty no longer.”

–Mads