Short answer? Not nearly as much as most of us think.
I met with a man earlier today for spiritual direction, and we were talking about his "spiritual resume." (That's not what he called it, but it's a good metaphor.) He looked back over his life and felt that he didn't have much to show for the years he has walked with God. He named off a few significant efforts he had been part of, but his performance never measured up to his expectations of himself. He was convinced that God was disappointed with him.
I understand how he feels. I've felt that way myself. As a young man, I had big dreams of what I would accomplish for God, but as of this moment in my life, none of them have come to be. I used to feel badly about what I haven't accomplished from my list, but now I see things differently.
Most of my dreams were about doing something big and noteworthy, but I've come to realize that those dreams were more about my personal success and significance than about building God's Kingdom. And when I look at what God has allowed me to do quietly and without public acclaim - love my wife, raise my kids, care for my friends, tell people about Jesus - I realize that there is deep and lasting value in these low profile efforts.
In truth, God doesn't care about our spiritual resumes. Anything of merit on them was 99% God's work and only 1% us. And there are probably a lot of "wood, hay and straw" (1 Corinthians 3:12-15) accomplishments that were motivated by our pride or fear or feelings of obligation in the moments when we did them.
What God cares about is us.
When I teach kids, I say,
"God cares more about your WHO than your DO."
By this I mean that God could accomplish all the things He wants to accomplish without our help, but He chooses to save a small part of the work for us, because He loves us and enjoys partnering with us to build His Kingdom. We are His children, His beloved! He delights in doing Kingdom work with us by His side.
God gave me this insight years ago when my oldest son was thirteen. At the time, I was between jobs and had some time on my hands. I was convicted that young boys should have some ritual that marks their transition from a young boy to a young man, so my son and I took the summer and did ten "manhood challenges."
One of them was a service project for his grandfather. I called my father-in-law and asked if he had a project he would like help with. He invited us down to the farm one weekend and asked my son to help him build a gazebo deck. Up to this point in his life, my son had never held a power tool or pulled a saw through lumber. He was a total novice, but his grandfather lovingly showed him how to measure and cut and hammer and drill. In the early afternoon, my son stood on his newly built deck with immense satisfaction. "Look what I did!" he said.
I was very proud of him...and I also witnessed how much of the credit for the work belonged to his grandfather, who had envisioned the project, created the diagram, bought the wood, brought the tools, paid for the electricity, imparted the know-how, fixed my son's mistakes, provided encouragement and made the sandwiches for lunch. His grandfather could have done the project by himself a lot faster with less errors and waste, but he didn't want to. He wanted to give his grandson an experience that built a man as well as a gazebo. That's a beautiful picture of God to me.
As I wrapped up the spiritual direction session, the Holy Spirit gave the man a beautiful and powerful new metaphor.
"God doesn't want me to build a spiritual resume. He wants us to make a scrapbook together."
I love that! God isn't an interviewer sitting across a desk evaluating a list of our spiritual accomplishments. He is a Father sitting side-by-side with us on the couch flipping through the scrapbook of our lives, saying, "Do you remember that? I was so proud of the way you handled that disappointment. You reminded me of my Son in that moment." It's not so much what we accomplish that pleases God as it is who we are becoming as we experience the with-God life.
So does God care about our performance? He will always care more about our WHO than our DO.
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