checklist

Ever feel like your life is a never ending ‘to-do’ list?

My mom was a list maker.
She always seemed to have a list around, whether it was a grocery list or a ‘to-do’ list.
There were always scraps of paper lying around with her lists on them.

There are seasons of life when it seems like the list of things to do are endless.

It exhausts me even thinking about it.

What frustrates me, though, is when my spiritual life begins to feel like a ‘to-do’ list.

I know what is on that list that I ‘should’ be doing.
And there are times when I feel guilty if I fail to check the items off the list.
After all a ‘good’ Christian should be doing those things on the list.

It really does aggravate me that we have made what should be a relationship into a checklist.

If my mom had on her list ‘spend 15 minutes talking to my daughter’
With a little check-box next to it waiting to be checked off,
What kind of relationship would we have anyway?
Honestly, I would be upset if I saw that on her list.

Yet I feel like that is how we treat our relationships with God.
Check off the 15 minutes of Bible reading.
There we go.
Done with that for today.
Then we pat ourselves on the back and go on with our day.
After all, we did what we ‘should’ do.

Good for us!

Well…

It has to be more than that.

Just checking the box does nothing.
It changes no one.

God wants a heart change.
There has to be a relationship.
Not a checklist.