Not a Checklist

I’ve heard it before—let’s be honest, you’ve heard it before—wait, let’s be truly transparent here, we’ve all said it before: I just wish that someone would tell me what I need to do. I wish there was a checklist. I wish there was some kind of twelve step program, survival guide, or instruction manual.

We’ve said it about parenting. We’ve said it about our mental health. We’ve said it about our marriages (or our singleness), about balancing our jobs and our home lives, about, oh, any number of things.

So we buy the self-help books and the parenting guides and the marriage manuals. We read every article that’s titled something along the lines of “Five Steps to Beat Depression” or “Twelve Ways to Live Your Best Life” or “Three Must Do’s for Self-Care”. We listen for sermon series that will tell us the best ways to do all the things. And we hope to goodness that our efforts will produce the end results we long for.

We want a quick fix. We want a One Right Way. We want some surety that if we do all the right things we are going to get the right results.

But that’s not what God gave us. He didn’t give us a checklist: He gave us Himself. He gave us a Savior. He gave us a Father. He gave us a friend.

And some of us think that He screwed up.

Yes, we love Jesus. Yes, we are glad He came to save us. Yes, we know we need His help. But it would’ve been a lot easier if He would just tell us exactly what to do so that we can go ahead and do it. (Cue “Be a lot cooler if you did” meme.)

But here’s the thing: He tried that already. He told the Israelites what to eat and how to bathe and what to wear and even how to cut their hair. And how did that go for them? Well, within a single generation, they were back to every man doing what was right in his own eyes. True story.

Still, somehow we’ve convinced ourselves that we would be the exception to that rule. We think that surely it would be different this time. If God would just condescend to give us the checklist, then we could handle things pretty well on our end. After all, shouldn’t there be one right way for us to do things? He’s a God of order, right?, not chaos. We can all be unified in the truth together, right?

Absolutely. If we were all robots.

But we’re not. God created each one of us to be unique, not just from each other, but also in our relationships with Him. Let me put it this way, I interact with my friends in different ways because they themselves are different. I don’t share the same jokes with Sam that I do with Leslie because they have different senses of humor. Neither would I give Tiffany the same parenting encouragement that I would give Angie because their kids—and their life circumstances—are vastly different.

Okay, fine, we say: we want a checklist, but we want one that is specifically tailored exactly to us. Sure, but seasons change. We change. Will the checklist still apply? Chances are not good.

And let’s be brutally honest here: what are our chances of actually completing the tasks on the checklist? I’m just saying: half of the boxes in my bullet journal carry little arrows and x’s instead of tiny checkmarks of happiness. The fact that we think we could handle things just fine if we were told exactly what to do has a lot more to do with misplaced pride than any of us want to admit.

And God knows this. He knows that we are unique. He knows that our circumstances change. He knows that what works for one might not work for another, that what works in one season of life might not be applicable in the next. He knows that we are incapable of living up to our ideals, that we will never be able to accomplish all that we want to, and that even when given explicit instructions we will still con ourselves into doing what is right in our own eyes (which often means polishing off a carton of ice cream at nine at night). He knows that if we could do it on our own and cut Him out of the equation, we probably would. He knows this, and that’s why He offers us something different.

He gives us Himself. Over and over. We ask for a checklist, and He gives us something better. He gives us immediate access to all His wisdom, all His help, all His strength, all His encouragement. All we have to do is open our Bibles, open ourselves to Him in prayer, open our hearts in vulnerability to His people so they can walk alongside us…open up and wait to see what He will say, what He will do.

And no, it’s not clear cut. It’s not “ten easy steps”. It’s not about our ability. It’s doesn’t look the same for Joe as it does for Sally. And sometimes the wait seems interminably long.

Hold on. Don’t skip the wait, don’t try to rush it, don’t be like Saul offering the sacrifice before Samuel arrives because he was more concerned with the check mark than the relationship. Be unified in the truth that Jesus is enough, instead of trying to unify around a mile long list of ways that we think would make us enough.

What Jesus offers us is different. It’s different, and it’s far better than what we think we want. It’s relational. It’s gentle. It’s hard sometimes. It’s the day in and day out choice to choose Christ, to be present with Him, to engage fully in the relationship, to make our lives about Him.

And if we can stop wishing for a checklist, it can be incredibly good…because He is the best thing we could ever ask for. Ever. And I promise, He is far better than any checklist.