"I quit." 

Those of you who know me well know that those words don't often come out of my mouth together. Achievement fuels me. My goals are always before me. I tend to believe that with enough hard work, anything can be accomplished. Once I attain a goal, I am running full speed ahead to the next goal.

In some ways, I am never satisfied. There is always a better way, always room for improvement. It is never finished. 

"It is finished." These were Jesus last words before he would die and days later be resurrected. What was finished? In brief, everything Jesus needed to accomplish on our behalf – enduring the agony of our sin and the resulting absence of God's presence, so we would never have to again. 

However, many Christians (myself included) tend to live as if Jesus forgot to dot a few "i"s and cross a few "t"s. In all of our efforts to look good and have everything together spiritually, our lives are negating Jesus' finished work. In effect, we become the object of our own faith. 

What does this have to do with embracing and being embraced by Jesus Christ (where I left you at the end of Part I)? Everything. 

When I was a little girl, the moment my dad walked in the door from work, I was lined up at the end of the entryway ready to run and leap into his arms. I never worried about whether he would catch me or not. I know my daddy was strong enough to hold me and the few joyful moments I would spend in his arms would reassure me of my father's love for me.

When we embrace someone, we are also being embraced. And since we know that God is much grander than we are, this embrace is more about being taken up in His arms and resting in Him. 

Most parents say that their love for their children is immediate. They don't wait for their infants to prove themselves worthy of being loved. They love their children because they belong to them. 

In the same way, I (and all who have been claimed as God's children) can rest in our identity in Jesus Christ, the one who has finished what we could not. 

So I quit. No more striving. Anything I am doing to prove myself is worthless and, actually, quite disgusting. Because of who I am in Christ and what he has finished on my behalf, I am free to just be. 

Consequently, I am practicing the presence of God and transformationally his love releases me to let go of striving. My most recent release was marathon training. I have run one marathon, and I learned so much about perseverance and dependence on God for strength. I wanted to run a second marathon, but one day in the midst of a run, I couldn't go on anymore (granted it was over 90 degrees out). I prayed a half-surrendered prayer, telling God he could stop me if he wanted to (but really, I didn't want him to). 

I kept running, thinking I was ok but knowing I wasn't. Deep down, in spite of all my spiritualizing of the race, my real motivation ended in pride.  I already have a finisher's medal. There is nothing left to prove. 

Once I was convicted that I probably shouldn't keep going (a month later), God took it away. My medical certificate was rejected for not saying "marathon in competition" (mine only said "marathon") and not having the stamp of my doctor (doctors in the States don't have stamps). 

Now my goal is to run the race of faith, running toward my savior Jesus who loves me, who has accomplished everything that matters. 

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart." – Hebrews 12:1b-3

Part III will focus on practicing the presence of Christ and what it means to enter His rest. Until then, I urge you to give up and get going toward Jesus. 

Open caskets terrify me. The first one I ever saw was at the funeral of a toddler I babysat for who died suddenly of meningitis. The two-year-old lying in the coffin looked a small child sleeping from a far. When I came closer though, I could see the pasty make-up covering the lifeless face. The bed-jumping, song-singing, wiggling little boy was gone. 

The second open casket was the visitation before my grandma's funeral. But it wasn't my grandma I visited. I visited a body, wearing my grandma's clothes, made to look as though she was alive. I don't know what it was about the corpse, but none of us in the family felt like it was her. Maybe it was that she wasn't wearing her glasses. Maybe it was that death had taken the puffiness out of her cheeks. Whatever it was, in that moment, I knew that, while my grandmother's body was still on earth, her spirit had departed. She would never hug me or squeeze my hand like the last time I had seen her alive. 

Are you looking alive or fully alive? This was a question posed by pastor and author Alan Kraft at the ReachGlobal Europe conference I attended in Slovenia last month. "Look alive!" is a "cheer" sometimes heard from the stands when the home team is being crushed by the opponent. Often times, ministry teams have the same attitude when morale is down. It's as if by staying busy, we think we can convince ourselves and those around us, that we're doing okay. 

However, just as no beautician can fully disguise death, no amount of trying, no amount of good works, no amount of good intentions, can make us fully alive in Christ. In fact, by trying harder, we are putting our confidence in our own ability, in our own flesh and effort, instead of the finished work of Jesus Christ through his death and resurrection. We are in essence believing that we can somehow make ourselves more acceptable to God. 

Take a look at The Message paraphrase of Paul's letter to the Philippians, chapter 3:2-9 (emphasis mine): 

"Steer clear of the barking dogs, those religious busybodies, all bark and no bite. All they’re interested in is appearances -- knife-happy circumcisers, I call them. The real believers are the ones the Spirit of God leads to work away at this ministry, filling the air with Christ’s praise as we do it. We couldn’t carry this off by our own efforts, and we know it -- even though we can list what many might think are impressive credentials. You know my pedigree: a legitimate birth, circumcised on the eighth day; an Israelite from the elite tribe of Benjamin; a strict and devout adherent to God’s law; a fiery defender of the purity of my religion, even to the point of persecuting the church; a meticulous observer of everything set down in God’s law Book.

The very credentials these people are waving around as something special, I’m tearing up and throwing out with the trash—along with everything else I used to take credit for. And why? Because of Christ. Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant—dog dung. I’ve dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ and be embraced by him. I didn’t want some petty, inferior brand of righteousness that comes from keeping a list of rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from trusting Christ--God’s righteousness."

Paul had ever reason to put confidence in his credentials. Yet he considers it all "dog dung" (some might choose an even more "choice" word). Why? Because God's righteousness is so much better. If this were a blind taste test, brand A has nothing on the surpassing flavor of brand B. There is no competition.

All of us at the conference were given a sheet of toilet paper. We were told to write anything and everything on it that was giving us a false sense of spiritual health. We wrote down the behaviors, beliefs and attitudes that we had embraced in our efforts to make sure God still loved us. The next time we had the urge "to go," we were to let our list go with it, down the tubes of the toilet.

It's one thing to flush our own righteousness, but how do we even begin to "embrace Christ and be embraced by him?" In case you are already overwhelmed by the length of this blog post, reflections this answer will come in part two. In the meantime, I urge you to make your own TP list. What are you doing to look alive?