Who Not What

There is a saying I love that always helps me keep things in perspective when my desire to do totally cool things threatens to take over my life: It's who you are, not what you do that matters. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if you accomplish the greatest feats in all the world, who you are is what really counts. The Bible puts it much better than I could:

If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.
1 Corinthians 13:1-3

But I think there is a flipside to this as well. A lot of times when we think about God, we think about all of the awesome things that he has done for us. We remember the time when he sent peace to get us through the loss of a loved one. We remember the time he provided for us when we needed money and we didn't think there was any way we were going to make it. We remember when he helped us find our keys that one time they fell out of our pocket at the movie theater and were hidden under a row of seats. God has done a lot of amazing things for us, but he is so much more than what he does.

It is easy to root our faith in what he has done for us when he has done so much - to worship him for how well he takes care of us. But we should not plant our faith in what he does. Our faith should be rooted in who he is...his character, his nature, his goodness, his divinity. Everything that he does for our benefit springs from who he is. God does good things because by his very nature he is good. Nothing he does goes against his nature, so even when we don't understand why or how something could be happening, we trust the character of the God who is at work and put our faith in who he is. And what is the key to that kind of faith? Knowing God.

It's who He is, not what He does that matters.