Rule Follower

My name is Mindy, and I am a rule follower. I have always been and expect that I will always be a rule follower. This is probably one of the top things that drives Matthew nuts about me (the other being that I make excuses for people I don’t even know – I’ll have to save that for another day…and yes, there are more than two things about me that drive him nuts).

Our church does things a little different than I am used to. We switch Sunday school teachers each quarter. I am sure there are other reasons, but I’ve only been told it is because the church does not want to have “people followers” – instead wanting us all to be Jesus followers. Because the teacher changes often, we have mentor couples in our class. These couples are a little bit older and have been married longer than the rest of us. It is actually a neat opportunity to get to know more people within the church. While on a marriage retreat back in February, we met a couple who had this particular man (BT) for their teacher. The girl told us that BT “would change our lives.” We laughed about that then…just because it was an odd statement.

Anyway, recently in our Sunday school class our teacher (BT) was teaching about sin. We talked about sin for an entire quarter although Matthew and I were only there for a handful of those Sundays. The basic teaching of the topic was that God is more concerned with our heart than our actions. Said this way, I completely agree. However, I had the hardest time listening and thinking about the lesson as the teacher presented it. We talked about how our behavior is a reflection of what is in our heart. Again, I agree with that. The teacher presented this specific example: someone struggles with looking on the internet to satisfy a lust in his/her heart. Say this person is in an accountability group and has made known his/her struggle with this particular issue. This person is alone one night and has the opportunity to look on the internet for this satisfaction but chooses not to because of the pact he/she made with the accountability group. The teacher was pointing out that in this situation nothing had changed in the person’s heart. He/she still wanted to satisfy that desire but chose not to do so – not because of a desire to honor God, but because of a desire to be truthful to his/her friends. Obviously, it’s a good thing that he/she chose not to sin by looking, but the sin is still in the heart. The main message of the quarter was that behavior is not what’s important when it comes to sin. My heart is what is important. And until my heart has gone through a transformation, I am still in trouble with my sin. Just because I don’t act out my sin does not mean I am not a sinner.

I believe all those things are true, but there is a part of me that must be somewhat conditioned to a deeds based mentality about my spirituality. I 100% believe that I will meet Jesus face to face one day in heaven because he paid the penalty for my sin. Period. I did nothing to earn or deserve His mercy and grace. But somehow there must be times when I believe that outside appearances matter for something. Because I want to follow the rules no matter what my heart looks like. Somehow in my mind, if I am following the rules, I must be doing ok. This obviously happens when I am trying to please or impress people rather than focusing on bringing glory and praise to God.

The funny thing to me now is that I have actually been thinking about this lesson ever since.

**As I just reread this, it is not very cohesive. Sorry! I hope it makes some sort of sense.