Don’t Should on Yourself

Christians often suffer from a terrible malady: We “should” on ourselves.

Pastors tell us that we should read our Bibles more, and so we feel guilty when we don’t.

Then we hear on Christian radio that we should be giving more money to the poor children in Africa, and we feel guilty when we don’t.

We read blogs, and they tell us that we should love the poor and needy more, and we feel guilty if we don’t.

Mothers hear from female speakers that they should be cooking more homecooked meals and reading books to their children at night, and they feel guilty when they don’t always do this.

Fathers hear from men’s leadership speakers that they should be spending more time with their kids and leading the family in daily devotions, and they feel guilty when they fail at this.

Others tell us that we should memorize Scripture, attend more Bible studies, stop studying the Bible to go serve our neighbors, spend more time with our families, get our children involved in sixteen activities,pray more, do more to be an answer to our prayers, be cheerful more, be more somber and serious, sin less, homeschool our children so they are not polluted by the world, keep our children in school so they can be lights to the world, and on and on it goes.

The end result is that we get buried under a pile of “should.” All that we should be doing or should not be doing.

I have been guilty of doing this in my own preaching, teaching, and writing, and I feel like I should stop.

Ha! See how that works?

Seriously though, I hope that as you read this blog and some of the things I recommend you do as followers of Jesus, you recognize that these are not necessarily things you “should” be doing (even if I said that in a post), but are things you can do.

Instead of telling people what they should be doing, I want to start encouraging people with what they can be doing. None of the things I say or write about are intended to make people feel guilty or like they are not living up to their full potential, or like they are disappointing God, or not doing everything they should be doing as a follower of Jesus. 

No, most of my posts are about things that interest me and which encourage me as I see the Kingdom of God expanding in my life and in the lives of people I know. But this doesn’t mean that you should be doing the same thing. No. Not at all! These are things you can do if you are looking for ideas on how to follow Jesus, but they are not things that you must do or should do.

For me, following Jesus comes down to a few simple principles. They are this:

1. God loves you fully and completely, no matter what.

Yes, no matter what. 

There is not something you can do (or fail to do) which will make Him love you any more or any less. God loves you completely and infinitely just as you are. It is not that God loves some future version of yourself more than He loves who you are right now. No matter what you do in the future (or don’t do) His infinite love for you will remain unchanged.

That is part of what agape love is. It is infinite and unconditional love. There are no conditions on God’s love for you. His love is not conditioned on you fixing up your life or changing your priorities so you do more of the things you should be doing. No, God loves you no matter what.

There are things we can be doing which will help us experience His love in a fuller way, but whether we do these things or not will not change God’s love for us.

2. Don’t feel guilty. Just Love.

Because of God’s great love for us, there is nothing to feel guilty about. He loves us no matter what. This liberates us and frees us to love others.

Who should we love? Ah, that is the wrong question, which only leads to more fear and guilt.

Instead, ask “Who can I love?” See how the simple word change provides more freedom and flexibility?

When we focus on who we can love, instead of whom other people (or we ourselves) think we should love, we see that we don’t necessarily need to do anything grand, or go anywhere special, or say anything insightful.

We can just look around us, wherever we are, whatever we are doing, and show a bit of love to whomever is there.

We are so often buried down with a load of what we think we “should” do that we miss out on all the things we “can” do. We get so busy scurrying around to check the things off our list of what we think will make God love us more, we miss the opportunities He has prepared to show us that He already fully loves us.

Even as I write this, it is starting to sound like another thing you “should” be doing. Please understand, I don’t intend it that way. I hope you just relax, slow down, and look around. There is nothing you should do, but lots of things you can do, and only you can decide which of those things God is inviting you to join with Him in.

Don’t get burdened down in life with a load of “shoulds.” Realize instead that God loves you completely, and anything we decide to do is a natural outflowing of that love, not because we should or must do these things, but because in the Father’s love, we can.