Nate Larkin says he had to drop his religiosity to find real love from his Father in heaven. Working to please God simply didn’t work and wasn’t what He wanted anyway. Nate is second in his life to the Lord and the author of the book, Samson and the Pirate Monks: Calling Men to Authentic Brotherhood
Working to please God simply didn’t work
Why not? As a parent, aren’t you pleased when your kids do good things? We might love our kids the same whether we deliver praise or a spanking – but don’t be prefer the first to the second?
Watch the testimony I linked to, though it won’t really answer this question. The answer is that we cannot please God with our own effort. Our sin, the very core of our nature, alienates us from the Father, and only by the work of the Son can we be restored to it.
“All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.” Isaiah 64:6
I tried to reply to you, and then realize I couldn’t. This point is one of the chasms between Judaism and Christianity, deeper than the incarnation itself.
In the same chapter, Isaiah says that God can fix us. Not that He can fix the world is such a way that we’ll be acceptable – but that He can fix us.
Isaiah 64:8 Yet, O LORD, you are our Father.
We are the clay, you are the potter;
we are all the work of your hand.
That’s the key. God fixes us. But as long as we allow ourselves to be deceived into thinking that we are ok or good enough, we won’t let Him fix us. Nor will we turn the the fix he has given us, the blood of Jesus.