StudyGrowKnow

Here’s Why It is So Difficult

August 25, 2026 at 12:31 PM Leave a comment

Consider the woman of the city who visited Jesus while He was having supper at Simon the Pharisee’s home. We find this in Luke 7:36–50. This woman was totally focused on Jesus and seeing Him and His love for her and all sinners, moved her to simply reduce herself to a servant, but she did so gladly. She understood to a greater degree than most just how much Jesus loved her in spite of her sin, and her response to His love was to lower herself to the lowliest of servants, crying tears of repentance and joy over his feet and wiping those same tears with her hair. She also could not stop kissing His feet. Imagine how that must have looked in that day and age!

Folks, we need to more fully understand what was happening during that situation. First, the woman walked right into that Pharisee’s home – oh what a scandal! Second, she was so moved by Jesus’ love and compassion that she wept! Those tears fell on Jesus’ feet. Then, she actually had to loosen her hair (women normally kept their hair up in public), and used her hair as a towel to wipe His feet! Finally, to top it off, she continued kissing Jesus’ feet and she did this publicly and without remonstrance from Jesus Himself! In other words, He fully accepted her worship of Him!

How did that woman get to that point? Simply by seeing the level of Jesus’ love for her. I’m sure when He looked at her, when He spoke with her, there was an unbearable level of kindness and love He expressed to her that left her in wonderment. She saw it and felt it. She was slain by that love. She could not lower herself enough before Him so she did all that she could even though she didn’t have much (except the oil she also used to pour onto Jesus’ head).

Do we ever stop to consider what our approach to Jesus will be when we come face to face with Him in eternity?? It’s difficult for us to shape that thinking here because He is invisible to us and because there are so many distractions in this life. We are separated by this physical life from Him, though He is clearly here within us via the Holy Spirit. When I finally see Him, I hope I will prostrate myself before Him. I hope I will caress His nail scarred feet and hands. I hope I will give Him all the love I possess for Him. I hope out of all the wonderful things in eternity, Jesus will be my main focus.

But we don’t do that in this life, do we? Not often. We are too taken aback and confounded by the problems and issues of life. We go through our daily lives and even if we are thinking of Him or praying to Him, we find that the reality of His Presence is largely missing. We want what the woman of the city in Luke 7 had and we want that to be something that continually and consistently grows within us to a greater and greater degree.

I firmly believe the more we come to appreciate just how much God in Christ loves us (and those in this world), the greater our love will be not only for Jesus, but for other people we cross paths with in this life. I’ve said it before and I’ll continue to repeat it because I need to hear it…over and over again: I need to grow in my appreciation for God’s love. It is difficult to grasp because the enemy doesn’t want us to understand or appreciate it. The enemy wants us to become preoccupied with doing things that may have absolutely no eternal value and/or done from the wrong motivation. If we are busy, busy, busy (even in ministry), we can kid ourselves into believing we are “growing in Him” and making gains.

Sometimes, it is more than enough to simply sit still and know that He is God (Psalm 46:10). Doing so allows us to adore Him increasingly. That only comes when we “sit still” and focus on Him, His wonderful work on our behalf and the fact that He and He alone is God Almighty. We are members of His family, joint-heirs with Jesus! If we fail to focus on Him in this manner, we will focus on all the “works” that we think we must do in order to “maintain” our salvation and assurance of salvation.

I love my wife tremendously. I am so grateful I met her and she agreed to marry me. We have been married just over 40 years and going stronger now than before, though then we thought we were at our best. Because I love my wife, I like doing things for her because I want to prove my love for her. It’s not because I “have to” but because I really want to. I find ways to help her, encourage her and show my support of her in her daily life. She is often on my mind throughout the day. I cannot imagine not being married to her! The things I do for her are those that spring forth from the closeness I feel for her. The more I focus on her as a person, her beauty, her Christ-like personality, her servant’s heart, the more I grow to love her and then I want to do more things for her. It’s a cycle.

My wife is the same way toward me. She often goes out of her way to do things for me that she knows I appreciate. She puts extra effort into making certain dinners because of my likes and dislikes. She will text me during the day when I’m at work to remind me that she loves and cares for me. I know I am in her thoughts even when I’m away from her.

It is when I become wrapped up in myself, my own felt needs, or my anxious thoughts, that I tend to not see her in my mind as often as I should see her. During these times, I might become short with her. Why? It’s because I am caring more about how I feel about something than about my relationship with her. Sure, I could force myself to do the right thing where she is concerned in spite of my preoccupation with other things, but that is self-effort, compared to having it naturally flow out of a full heart for her. Which way is better?

It is the same with being a believer. The more we understand how much God in Christ loves us, the easier it becomes to obey Jesus’ command found in John 15:12, where He tells us that He literally has one command for us – to love one another as He has loved us. The only other way to live the life of a Christian (by serving others), is to do so from our own self-effort, which is exhausting, isn’t it?

If we love others, it is astounding what we can accomplish for them and it doesn’t even use noticeable effort. It simply comes out of us because of our love for God and them. Forgive me if this is something readers might disagree with, but I contend that by always focusing on whether or not I’m living up to God’s expectations for me (doing enough, saying enough, thinking enough, etc.), or beating myself up over past situations that seem to me to constitute failings on my part, no matter how “religious” all of that may seem, it all boils down to an inordinate focus on my SELF. The only remedy for that is to move that focus from Self to God. But the enemy of our souls wants us to focus on Self. Doing so preempts us from actually living for Jesus. We are always looking back over our shoulder trying to figure out whether or not we are doing things “correctly.”

Paul said he never judged himself but simply pressed on to do what he knew he needed to be doing (1 Corinthians 4:3). That may sound like he was “working,” but that pressing on, I believe, came from a growing awareness of just how great Christ’s love for him was and that growing awareness prompted him to press on daily, in spite of the negatives that seemingly stood in his way. Ultimately, Paul knew his standing before God was something solely determined by God Himself, based on Paul’s faith not his works. Paul’s faith was based completely on what Jesus did for him (and us) and his faith in Christ’s work.

Do you find yourself walking on eggshells before God all the time waiting for the hammer to drop? Do you think you’re not doing enough or not in a good enough way? Do you find yourself worrying that you could either lose salvation (not possible), or not persevere to the end (which is completely taken out of context by the way!), so that you may learn that you never had salvation in the first place? That is seriously restricting.

Folks, if you’re not already doing so, start focusing on just how much Jesus loves you. He paid the ultimate price by dying in our place. If that does not speak to His infinite love for us, nothing will. Why do we start with faith when we come to God for His salvation and then try to finish the race by our own effort? Passages like “work out your salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12), often confuse because we fail to understand the context. Yes, we must do something, but it’s often not what we think. I’ve been guilty of that misconception myself.

If we just shift our gaze onto Jesus, the Author AND Finisher of our faith (Hebrews 12:2), we would use far less self effort and simply rely on the Spirit within to help us to live the way we should live. We do so by growing in our appreciation for His great love for us. What other way can it possibly come to us and impact us spiritually?

When we are around other people who genuinely like or love us, it is relaxing isn’t it? You feel comfortable being there. You don’t feel like you need to force yourself to be something you don’t feel like being. You just enjoy the other people’s presence and they you. You can be free to be yourself without fear of being judged.

Too many of us have the wrong focus. That needs to change and it can only change when we grow in our awareness and understanding of just how much God in Christ loves us. It’s not wrong to meditate on that, because it is what God has done because that is who God is toward us! It is His very nature (1 John 4:8), which caused Him to reach out toward us, creating a way for us to receive salvation. He clearly wants us to comprehend that love! Ask Him to help you better understand His love and forgiveness. The more we grasp these things, the greater our forgiveness will be toward those who sin against us. I believe at least part of the problem is again due to Self. We do not see ourselves as having been forgiven much, so we don’t love much (going back to the woman of the city, Luke 7:47).

Ask Him to bathe you thoroughly in His great love, shed abroad in your heart (Romans 5:5). If you (or I) find it difficult to “conjure” up that love, it’s likely because we are chasing the wrong thing. This promise that His love is shed abroad in our hearts is due to the Holy Spirit living within us. This love is what should motivate us to do good works, not because we feel the need to keep our salvation “safe,” but the focus shifts away from ourselves entirely and onto others. This is exactly what Jesus did during His earthly life. He lived to serve others and He did so willingly because of His great love for them. He did not grudgingly do things because He wanted to make the Father happy. Jesus did what He did from a pure heart, a heart that was directed by an overwhelming love for the lost. This is why He continued to serve others and meet their needs. This is why He preached, counseled, fed, healed and even raised the dead. Yes, of course those things testified to His character and purpose in life as Messiah/Savior, pointing to the fact that He was/is God in the flesh. However, He did what He did because He felt such love for other people. That love prompted Him to help wherever He could and it also prompted Him to forgive when people sinned against Him. His entire motivation was thoroughly based on loving the Father and others.

Everything Jesus did was motivated by a tremendous love for those who were outside of God’s Kingdom. Even in His discourse with the scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees, when they would argue with Him and He would even become angry with them for their obstinate refusal to recognize truth because it would affect the kingdoms they had built for themselves, He was still motivated by love for them. As recalcitrant children who needed correction, Jesus was hoping His anger and strong words would convict and bring change. Instead, it cemented their disobedience and caused Jesus to cry over their rejection of Him ( Luke 13:34).

We can either try to imitate Jesus’s words, actions and thoughts in our own strength (by sheer effort using SELF), or we can begin to see just how great His love is not only for us, but for the entire world. The former may look good on the outside, but God sees the inside. The latter motivates us to live as He lived, loving others as God loves us. The first way requires a great deal of self-effort, while the second way is when we are carried along by His love and grace that flows from within.

Which do you think is better?

Entry filed under: Atheism and religion, christianity, eternity, Religious - Christian - Theology, salvation, sanctification.