Being Over Doing

I feel a deep conviction in my soul. There is a huge piece I missed as we launched Heartstrong season 1. Even my welcome opener video was about how you “do” Heartstrong. I got it wrong. Heartstrong is not something you do.

You see, I got Heartstrong wrong. It wasn’t an invitation to come and do Heartstrong Discipleship Intensive together. It was an invitation to become Heartstrong Disciples of Jesus. A natural outflow of being is doing. Our actions confirm our identity. The things we do reveal who we are. The motive is different.

I can do all the things that Heartstrong offers. I can wake in the dark, do Bible reading, do bible study, practice sabbath, practice fasting, practice worship, and all those actions can prove to myself, others, and God that I am a good disciple. I am doing all the things that disciples do, yet all I have become is a good performer. I get really good at doing but never really get to the true depth and freedom of being. Doing first leads us to an identity of doing the things a disciple does, and it’s really easy for us to do this and to do it very well.

We have been wandering around this mountain long enough. It’s time to turn northward. There is a great climb ahead of us out of the comfort of our doing into a place of true belonging. Why is it so hard to simply belong to Christ? Because we are never even sure if we are good enough to belong. We do all the things, and still, we are not sure we really belong. We compare, we question, we doubt, does it even work? We pray and do not see answers. If God won’t do it for us, then how could we ever invite others into yet another place of striving and not-enoughness.

There is a mountain climb ahead of us, a place where we must let go of the comforts of doing and enter into a place of true being, true belonging that has nothing to do with what we have done or what we will do. It’s all about what Jesus has already done for us. It’s a new identity that we probably had when we first received Jesus but possibly lost along the journey of doing instead of being. We don’t want to do Heartstrong; we want to be heartstrong. We want to become heartstrong disciples of Jesus. We want our being to motivate our doing and our doing to inform our being. We want our identity to be rooted in belonging to God through the grace of Jesus’ life. An unconditional covenant is not dependent on our doing. We need to become people who judge ourselves and others less and humbly confess and repent more. If true belonging does not anchor into the very core of our soul, how can we invite others into this gift?

Doing keeps things on my terms. Doing it within my power and control. Doing takes my reliance off God and keeps it within my own agency. Doing proves again and again how capable I am. It comforts me. It’s a hiding place of proving to myself and others that everything is good, I need nothing, I have no lack. But what if all that is just a mask to keep God and others from going somewhere that is deeper, uncomfortable, vulnerable, and intimate? If I can keep all my relationships in the realm of “doing, ” I never have to be truly known. There is safety on the Road of Accomplishment. No one can ask more of you, and no one can deny how hard you work or how much effort you put in. Your busy mind and busy way prevent true intimacy from the painful risk of being fully loved and fully loving someone else.

A true journey of being, belonging, is an invitation home: The kind of home we have never experienced before and the belonging and acceptance we have never known in our sinful existence. It’s a dangerous mountain climb home that will bring us to the very end of ourselves. This climb will cost us our lives because we must let every identity that falls outside of belonging to God die. We must cut ties with all we have known to experience this homecoming.

Let’s become Heartstrong disciples of Jesus together!

Your Turn! Share your thoughts in the comments below. Thank you!