Competence, Conviction, and Character

I used to think drifting from God would feel like rebellion. But for me, it felt like productivity.

It crept in undetected behind a stack of theology books, underneath sermon outlines, and inside the pages of journal entries that grew more precise and less personal. I was studying Scripture like a surgeon examines a cadaver: expertly, methodically, without awe.

This wasn't how it started.

When I first surrendered to ministry, the call filled my every thought and consumed my every passion. I didn't want to preach. I thought maybe God would use me to write a curriculum. I froze, uncomfortable and unsure of what "surrender" meant. Then, my pastor began preaching through 1 Timothy. He said something that struck against my wrestling with God like a match against dry timber. His series contrasted competence and character. "The world hires based on competence, but God calls based on character," Bro Wade explained. He reminded us that while competence can be taught, character is forged by a life surrendered to God.

Eventually, I said yes to God. I never surrendered to a title or a task but to the call to give my life to God's service. I set out to grow in competence. I made plans to apply to seminary. I followed God as I left the comfort (and complacency) of a career. I began the hard work of preparation. I learned. I planned. I pushed onwards.

My drifting wasn't what we typically think of when we describe rebellion. It was subtle. My mind grew sharper, but my heart grew numb. I didn't fall out of love with God overnight. I just fell out of rhythm, worship, and prayer. The passion for Bible study that once pulled me out of bed in the early morning dissolved.
I became the pastor of a small church. I returned to the old leadership habits I developed in the secular world. I thought I was following Jesus, but I was walking parallel to the path He had laid before me. Close enough to look faithful, far enough to feel alone. I preached the truth without trembling under it. I taught disciplines I no longer practiced. I performed.

Five years after I first surrendered my yes to God, I sat in my study, reading through old journal entries. My Bible lay open to 1 Timothy as if God had pressed rewind. I flipped through pages of prayers, reflections, hopes, and heartaches. Between entries from the past week and those I wrote before as a young man with a new wife without children.

Those early entries spilled out with honesty. They were messy but full of longing and trembling with love for Jesus. They reflected a hunger to grow in Christ.
The most recent entries were cleaner. They were more polished. They were more accurate and biblical. But they were also lifeless.

That's when conviction hit. I had built a cathedral of competence, but the sanctuary of my soul was empty. I wasn't ministering anymore. I had become just another performer.
My sin wasn't the kind that makes its way to the headlines but the subtle sin of self-reliance. The sin of forgetting grace. The failure of serving without savoring. The wickedness of being near the things of God but far from God Himself.
In the silence of my study, the cross rose again - as an interruption.

Jesus didn't die so that we could work harder. He died because I couldn't work enough. "He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21). That's not an illustration. It's an exchange. Jesus took my place, my guilt, my shame, my self-sufficiency, my pride, and He bore it so that I wouldn't have to carry it anymore.

That's what Good Friday means to me -not a story of suffering long ago or a symbol of love in the abstract, but the place where my striving ended and His grace began again.
Maybe you're there. Perhaps you're doing everything right and feeling everything wrong. Has your spiritual walk grown silent, stale, or suspiciously professional?

I've got good news: Jesus didn't die to make you competent. He died to make you clean. He didn't call you to impress Him. He called you to trust Him.

Two thousand years later, the cross still speaks. Even in the silence of your study. Even in the pages of dry journals. Even now.