Quit trying to please god and start embracing who he is

​In a moment I can so relate to, the apostle Paul once lamented, "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do."

This was Paul saying, in frustration, I don't get me. I want to do all the right things but most days I struggle to do any of them. Paul is asking out loud, how is it that I know what to do but can't consistently do it.

Anyone else relate?

Paul was on a journey of discovering what I've been on a lifelong journey of discovering, that the mission of my spiritual life isn't to be a good toe-the-line employee of God, but rather, to be open to experiencing the spiritual nature of the God who chose to do life with me fully knowing I'd never be able to toe the line.

Paul would go on to teach us that there is no goodness that comes from a spiritual life aimed at getting straight A's to please the teacher. The goodness that comes from a spiritual life is accepting the spirit of the teacher who is far more interested in love for the sake of love than love for the sake of a grade.

I, like Paul, have spent too much of my life memorizing the performance standards God never set for me while ignoring the spirit of God that is daily living in me. The spirit God wants to flow into the world through me.

God has no need for me to memorize his rules; mainly because defining God becomes less and less necessary when I allow God's spirit to take over and define me. When I allow God's spirit to overflow in me with love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

Those are the fruits of God's spirit living in me long before and long after I do not do what I know I need to do.

I can too often get caught up feeling pressured to do what I know God wants me to do at the expense of not allowing myself to experience the God who longs for me to feel who he is.

When we are focused on pleasing the God who is out there, we are not embracing the spirit of the God who is in here.

"For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do." For Paul and for us, that is a forever truth. We can't escape it.

But for Paul and for us, there is another forever truth. The fruit of our spiritual journey with God isn't found in how well we perform, it's found in how well we embrace.

Embrace who God is and not what God expects.

The answer to living in alignment with God isn't doubling down on our efforts to quit doing the things I know I'm not supposed to do, it's doubling down on the time we spend allowing ourselves to feel and align with the spirit of who God is.

When we sit and ask God to allow us to feel the spirit of his love that is already living in us, the choices we make will look more and more like God's love. Not as a reflection of our commitment to doing what God says, but out of the beauty of living out who God is.

We will never be able to play the role of God in this life, so maybe it's time to quit rehearsing his role.

But we can look more and more like the spirit of God each and every day, so maybe it's time to spend more time embracing that spirit.

You can never please a teacher who isn't looking to be pleased, but we can always make the world a more beautiful place by adopting the spirit of the teacher.

And like Paul, if that's the mission of the spiritual journey we're on, to make the world a more beautiful place, that's a spiritual truth well worth knowing.