For years, Mike Atkinson has published a daily email humor list, which I enjoy reading. He calls it “Mikey’s Funnies,” and several years ago, he wrote:
If you can start the day without caffeine; if you can get going without pep pills; if you can always be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains; if you can resist complaining and boring people with your troubles; if you can eat the same food every day and be grateful for it; if you can understand when your loved ones are too busy to give you any time; if you can overlook it when those you love take it out on you when through no fault of yours something goes wrong; if you can take criticism and blame without resentment; if you can ignore a friend's limited education and never correct him; if you can resist treating a rich friend better than a poor friend; if you can face the world without lies and deceit; if you can conquer tension without medical help; if you can relax without liquor; if you can sleep without the aid of drugs; if you can say honestly that deep in your heart you have no prejudice against creed, color, religion, or politics; then, my friend, you are almost as good as your dog (Mike Atkinson, Mikey's Funnies, 6-26-02, www.mikeysfunnies.com).
It’s a little disconcerting to realize that your dog has more virtue than you.
So how can you ever hope to get right with a holy God? How can you ever hope to impress Him enough to hear your prayers and give you what you need? Well, if you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to Luke 18, Luke 18, where Jesus talks about effective praying. First, Jesus talked about persistence in prayer (vs.1-8). Now, He talks about your posture in prayer.
Luke 18:9-12 He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get’ (ESV).
This Pharisee basically told God, “You’re lucky to have me on your team.” And indeed, Jesus’ original audience would have thought the same thing about the Pharisee.
The common people viewed the Pharisee as the epitome of righteousness and virtue, because he was a strict adherent to God’s Law. In fact, he went beyond God’s law in his obedience to it. He fasted twice a week when the law only required a once a year fast on the Day of Atonement. And he tithed everything down to the smallest herbs he grew in his garden (Luke 11:42).
On commentator said, “God needs to do nothing for him. He makes no request of God; he offers no honor to God. This religious man has done it all. After reading his prayer, we wonder whether God should apply to be his assistant!” (D. L. Bock, Luke, InterVarsity Press, 1994).
This man didn’t trust in God. He didn’t need God in his mind, no! He trusted only in himself. He believed he was righteous, that he was good enough without God’s help.
Just a few years ago (2022), Newsweek magazine published Beatrice Fediuk’s obituary, which she had written a resumé for heaven. When she finally passed at age 94, the Winnipeg Free Press originally printed the resumé in its entirety, which was picked up by Newsweek.
It starts: “Dear Lord, please accept my application for Eternal Life. My resumé is as follows.” She divided her obituary into sections—like a real resumé—objectives, references, training, experience, volunteer work, and hobbies.
Beatrice gave a summary of her life history, saying she was born on October 22, 1927, to “loving parents Eugenie and Alfred. ... I have left my daughter Michelle, her husband Perry, my granddaughter Kali, and many nieces and nephews on earth, as there are no openings for them in Heaven just yet.”
She shared her memories, saying: “Lord, you know that (as a teacher) I never had any 'teacher's pets.’ Rather, I put my heart into teaching those with learning challenges, or difficult family situations. It was here that I feel I did my best work… I also continued volunteer work, knitting scarves for underprivileged children.”
Summing up her resume, she added: “Lord, I hope that you will find that I have met my Objectives and deserve a place in Your heavenly home. You know where to find me to further discuss my qualifications” (Rebecca Flood, "Woman Submits References to God for a Place in Heaven in CV-style Obituary," Newsweek, 2-21-22; www.PreachingToday.com).
Sad to say, that’s what a lot of people do. Oh, they may not be as blatant as the pharisee or even Beatrice Fediuk, but they work hard to impress God, who quite frankly disdains their efforts at self-righteousness.
In fact, the Bible says, “All our righteous acts are like filthy rags.” The original Hebrew paints a more graphic picture: “All our righteous acts are like used menstrual rags” in His sight” (Isaiah 64:6).
So, if you want to impress God, Stop relying on your own self-righteous activity. Stop trusting in yourself like the pharisee did.
And stop treating others with contempt like the pharisee did, as well. You see, he disdained the tax collector, who had also come to the temple to pray. He thanked God that he was not like those sinners. He thought he was better than they.
A pastor and his family on an early morning flight had been delayed for hours and were feeling sleep-deprived and anxious. As the plane landed, another family behind them attempted to exit quickly, with the teenager rushing ahead.
The pastor stuck his arm into the aisle to block the rest of the family from passing, like he was Gandalf in Lord of the Rings. “None shall pass.” He said to the family, “We’re all trying to get off this plane. Let’s wait our turn!”
They had words with him that I cannot share here and pushed past his arm. The pastor was fuming.
As the passenger disembarked, a flight attendant approached, explaining that the teenage girl had been experiencing a panic attack and needed assistance. The family had been trying to help her. The family was not rude; they were desperate.
The pastor felt bad. Later, he reflected, “How did I, a former chaplain trained to notice physiological signs of stress, miss that this young lady needed help? How did I let my core value of courtesy block my capacity to see what was really going on?
“I was operating out of assumption and unable to see reality. Rather than see that this young lady needed help getting off the plane, all I could see was a family rudely skipping the line, and I must intervene” (Steve Cuss, “We Can’t Worry Our Way to Peace,” Christianity Today, Sept/Oct, 2024, p. 30; www.PreachingToday.com).
It’s so easy to misjudge others, to consider them less virtuous, especially when you consider yourself most virtuous. That doesn’t impress anybody, much less God! So, if you want to impress God…
STOP TRUSTING YOURSELF.
Reject any self-righteous pride, and…
START TRUSTING THE LORD.
Recognize your own sinful spiritual poverty and cry out to God for mercy. That’s what the tax collector did.
Luke 18:13 But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ (ESV)
Literally, “be merciful to me THE sinner.” He saw himself as the worst sinner in his community. And indeed, that’s what Jesus’ original audience would have thought, as well. They despised tax collectors, because they traitorously worked for the despised Roman government and always took more money than the government required to pocket it for themselves.
You see, Rome sold the right to tax an area to the highest bidder, allowing the bidder to take in anything the traffic could bear. Now, usually, the traffic could bear a lot more than Rome required in taxes, so tax collectors got extremely rich on the backs of their own countrymen. As a result, extortion was built into the job and injustice was part of the trade. Everybody knew this, so his fellow Jews despised him. He was a traitor not just by one act of cowardice. He was a traitor all day and every day, which is why most people despised him. So he spent much of his time with other extortionists, evildoers, and the sexually loose (Haddon Robinson, Good Guys, Bad Guys, and Us Guys, www.PreachingToday.com).
Indeed, the tax collector was THE sinner in the community. But instead of trying to hide it, this tax collector admits it before a holy God, He beat his chest like a woman in that culture. He couldn’t even look up like most people did when they prayed. No. He looked down and cried out for mercy. Did God give it to him? You bet He did and more! Jesus said…
Luke 18:14 “I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted” (ESV).
God not only withheld the punishment he deserved—that’s mercy. God declared him righteous in His sight—that’s justification. This man humbled himself before the Lord, who instead of condemning him, exalted him above the most respected pharisee in the community.
After King David had sinned with Bathsheba and killed her husband, he mournfully confessed his terrible sins and declared, “A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (Psalm 51:17). God forgave him, as well, and declared him “a man after my own heart” (Acts 13:22).
My dear friends, if you want to impress God, don’t parade your good deeds before Him. Instead, confess your sins to Him, pleading for mercy, that He might give you so much more than what you ask.
Pastor Bryan Chapell talks about some friends of his whose son, in his middle teens, rebelled against them and against God. For four years he protested the innocence of his conduct and made innumerable promises to “straighten up.” But each excuse was unjustified, and each promise was broken.
So much pain, embarrassment, and discouragement had been inflicted on these parents that the wife confided that she did not know if she loved her son anymore. Her heart had grown hard against her own child. What melted it again was a cry of desperation.
After another escapade, followed by more protests of innocence from the son, the mother walked away. As the young man sat alone on the sofa in the family room, he began to leaf through a family photo album. The pictures of better and happier days filled him with increasing emotion. One picture struck him with greater poignancy than the rest, and he called his mother back into the room to look at it.
The photograph showed the son as a young child under the approving smile of his mother. The teen now pointed to the photo and said, “Mom, when I see this picture, I understand why you don't know if you can love me anymore. In the picture, hope fills your eyes as you look down at your little boy. But I dashed all your hopes, Mom. Please forgive me for dashing all your hopes.”
And what did the mother do? Her hardness broke and she embraced him with a heart renewed in love for him. What moved her were neither protests of innocence nor fresh promises to do better. Rather, she was moved by his statement of absolute desperation (Bryan Chapell, Holiness by Grace, Crossway, 2001, pp. 26-27; www.PreachingToday.com).
This is what moves the heart of God—not your protestations of innocence, but your profession of absolute desperation. If fact, Jesus Himself said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3).
Tim Keller says:
Being “poor in spirit” means seeing that you are deeply in debt before God, and you have no ability to even begin to redeem yourself. God's free generosity to you, at infinite cost to him, was the only thing that saved you.
But many people today resist Jesus' teaching about our spiritual poverty. Keller writes:
On the contrary, you believe that God owes you some things—he ought to answer your prayers and to bless you for the many good things you've done. Even though the Bible doesn't use the term, by inference we can say that you are “MIDDLE-CLASS IN SPIRIT.” You feel that you've earned a certain standing with God through your hard work. You also may believe that the success and the resources you have are primarily due to your own industry and energy (Timothy Keller, Generous Justice, p. 102-103; www. PreachingToday.com).
So you might pray as follows in this satirical rewrite of a traditional prayer of confession found in the Book of Common Prayer:
Benevolent and easy-going Parent: We have occasionally had some minor errors of judgment, but they're not really our fault. Due to forces beyond our control, we have sometimes failed to act in accordance with our own best interests. Under the circumstances, we did the best we could. We are glad to say that we're doing okay, perhaps even slightly above average. Be your own sweet Self with those who know they are not perfect. Grant us that we may continue to live a harmless and happy life and keep our self-respect. And we ask all these things according to the unlimited tolerances which we have a right to expect from you. Amen (David Head, He Sent Leanness Macmillan, 1959, p. 19, www.PreachingToday.com).
No wonder God refuses to hear and answer your prayers. No! Don’t pray that way. Instead, come to God with a broken and contrite heart. Acknowledge your desperate need of Him and plead with Him, “Be merciful to me the sinner.”
Pastor John Powell described a woman who said that as a girl she was poor. She said, “I grew up in a cold water flat, but I married a man who had money. And he took me up to a place where I had flowers, and I had gardens, and I had grass. It was wonderful. And we had children.
“Then suddenly I became physically sick. I went to the hospital, and the doctors ran all sorts of tests. One night the doctor came into my room, and with a long look on his face, said, 'I'm sorry to tell you this. Your liver has stopped working.'
“[She] said, 'Doctor, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Are you telling me that I am dying?' And he said, 'I, I can't tell you any more than that. Your liver has stopped working. We've done everything we can to start it.' And he walked out.
“I knew I was dying,” she said. “I was so weak, I had to feel my way along the corridor down to the chapel of the hospital. I wanted to tell God off. I wanted to tell God, 'You are a shyster! You've been passing yourself off as a loving God for two thousand years, but every time anyone begins to get happy you pull the rug out from under them.' I wanted this to be a face-to-face telling off of God.
“And just as I got into the center aisle of the chapel, I tripped, I swooned, I fainted. And I looked up, and there stenciled along the step into the sanctuary, where the altar is, I saw these words: LORD, BE MERCIFUL TO ME A SINNER. I know God spoke to me that night. I know he did.”
Pastor Powell said, “She didn't say how God communicated this to her, but what God said was, ‘You know what this is all about. It's about the moment of surrender; it's about bringing you to that moment when you will surrender everything to me. These doctors, they do the best they can. but they only treat. I'm the only one who can cure you.’”
And she said, “There with my head down on my folded arms in the center of the chapel, repeating, ‘Lord, be merciful to me a sinner,’ I surrendered to God. I found my way back to my hospital bed, weak as I was.
"The next morning, after the doctor ran the blood tests and the urinalysis and so forth, he said, ‘Your liver has started working again. We don't know why. We don't know why it stopped, and we don't know why it started up again.’ And she said in her heart, “But I know. Oh but I know. God has brought me to the brink of disaster, just to get me to turn my life over to him” (John Powell, “Prayer as Surrender,” Preaching Today, Tape No. 108; www.PreachingToday.com).
You do the same. Turn your life over to the Lord. Give up trying to impress Him and admit your desperate need for His mercy and grace.
For if you truly want to impress God, stop trusting yourself and start trusting the Lord. Reject any self-righteous pride and recognize your own sinful, spiritual poverty. Just plead with God, “Be merciful to me the sinner.”
Blaise Pascal, a 17th Century French philosopher once said, “The knowledge of God without that of our wretchedness creates pride. The knowledge of our wretchedness without that of God creates despair. The knowledge of Jesus Christ is the middle way, because in Him we find both God and our wretchedness (Blaise Pascal, translated by Kegan Paul, Pensees, Christianity Today, Vol. 40, no. 9; www.PreachingToday.com).
In Him, we also find God’s grace and mercy. So surrender your life to Christ, who died for you and rose again. Turn your life over to Christ and discover that “He is able to do far more abundantly than all that [you] ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20).
