What's the Point?

You're in a season of your life where everything feels pretty normal. Nothing crazy is happening. You're not in a crisis. Everything's just kind of humming along. And that's what makes this so hard to explain. See, because nothing is dramatically wrong. You haven't walked away from God and you haven't made some big mistake. You're still showing up. You serve, you tithe, you pray. You've been doing all the right things for a long time now. And your life, well, life looks about the same as it always has. Maybe even the same as the person next to you who isn't doing any of those things. In fact, if you're being really honest, his life might actually look a little better than yours right now. And somewhere in the quiet, in a moment you'd never say out loud in church or to your family or your friends, a question has started forming. What's the point? Hey, I'm Melissa, and this is my question for you. We are in season three in our series called The Question Behind the Question. And each week we've been taking one of the questions we actually carry and following it all the way down to what's really underneath it, because that's where the real conversation with God begins. Last week we sat with why me? Today we're sitting with something a little quieter, and I think for a lot of people, maybe even something heavier. What's the point? That's what we say. But my question for you, the question behind that question is this. Does what I do actually matter to God? Okay, so before we get into it, I want to just stop here for one second and just really frame this out. Because I think this is one of the most honest questions that any person of faith can ever ask, and it deserves to be named for exactly what it is. This question doesn't come from the people who gave up. It comes from the people who didn't. It's the question of the person who has been in church for years, who volunteers whenever they're asked, who serves in the background and doesn't need credit for it, the person who prays for their family, their finances, their future, and keeps praying even when the answers feel slow. It's for the person who gives generously even when it's hard, even when they don't have it to give, who tries to live with integrity even when it costs something. Person who is by every measure doing what they're supposed to do. And then they look up, and they look at someone they know. Maybe it's a coworker, it could be a neighbor, maybe someone from their own family or their their close circle of friends, someone who isn't living out any of this, someone who doesn't go to church, doesn't pray, doesn't give, and doesn't serve. And that person's business is thriving. Their marriage looks happy, their life from the outside looks blessed. And the faithful person doesn't want to feel what they're feeling because it feels wrong to feel it. It feels ungrateful and it feels a little bit like doubt, like you're doubting God. So they push it down. They go back to church on Sunday and they keep showing up, but the question doesn't go away. What's the point of it all if this doesn't seem to be doing anything? Why am I sacrificing things and choosing faithfully and trusting God if my life looks exactly like the person who isn't? Where is the favor I was promised? Where are the blessings? Am I missing something? Or is God missing me? That's the real question, and it's not a small one. I want to take you to two places in scripture where that exact question was already being asked out loud by people who loved God deeply and still needed to ask those questions. The first place I want to take you is Psalm 73. And if you've never sat with this psalm, I think you're going to be surprised by how much it sounds like something you probably could have written yourself. Asaph wrote Psalm 73. He was a worship leader. He was someone who spent his life in the presence of God, leading others in praise. And he opens this psalm with a declaration. He says, Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. That's the faith statement. That's what he knows, and that's what he believes. And then in the very next verse, he says something that's pretty remarkable. He says, But as for me, my feet had almost slipped. I had nearly lost my foothold. He almost fell away, not because of a dramatic crisis that happened in his life, but because of what he saw when he looked around him. He goes on to write, For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. They have no struggles. Their bodies are healthy and strong. They are free from common human burdens. They are not plagued by human ills. Does any of that sound familiar? They have no struggles. They're doing fine. Life is working well for them, very well for them. And then he says what might be the most honest thing we've heard. Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure and have washed my hands in innocence. He says, Surely in vain. In vain. That is what's the point written out in Scripture. That is a worship leader, someone who loved God, who knew God, who had served God, saying, Maybe this whole thing has been for nothing. And I want you to notice, God didn't strike him down for saying it. He wrote it, it made it into the Bible so we know it's true. Because God is not threatened by the honest question. We've talked about this, asking the hard questions and understanding and knowing and finding comfort in knowing that God is ready for and can handle the hard questions. And that's exactly what Asaph did here. God was there when Asaph asked the hard question, and he's here when you ask it too. Asaph keeps going. He says it made him bitter. He says he felt like a brute beast before God. That's his word, not mine. Senseless, confused, and angry. He had been faithful for years, and from where he was standing, it had produced nothing. And then something shifted. He says Until I entered the sanctuary of God, then I understood. Let's slow down there for a second. He says until that one word carries everything. He didn't get an explanation. He didn't get a spreadsheet or, you know, the answers showing him that it was all worth it. He didn't suddenly see the wicked suffer or the righteous prosper. He just got close to God. And in that closeness, something changed. Not his circumstances, his perspective. And I think that's where this episode is going to take us. But first, I want to take you to someone else who was living the same question. Okay, so most of us know the parable of the prodigal son. We know the younger brother's story. But there's another person in this story who I think we move past way too quickly. So today I want to stay with him for just a second. Let's go to Luke 15. Jesus is telling a story about a father with two sons. The younger son takes his inheritance early, he burns through everything that he was given, hits rock bottom feeding pigs in a foreign country, and eventually comes to his senses and decides to go home. That's the story we know. The father runs to meet him, there's a robe and a ring and a celebration. It's beautiful. That's the story that we know in the Bible and the one that sticks with us. But then there's the other son, the one who never left. He's been in the field all day, working the same way he always does, when he hears music coming from the house. He asks what's happening, and when he finds out his brother has returned home and there's a party, he didn't go inside. He stands out there in the field. And when his father comes out to find him, the older son finally says what he's been holding back for so long. He says, Look, all these years I've been slaving for you, and I never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never even gave me a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But with but when this son of yours comes back, after wasting everything you gave him, you killed the fattened calf for him. Read past the anger for a second, because there's a lot of it there, and I think it's understandable. But I want you to read past that because underneath that anger is a question he's probably been carrying for a long time. He says, I have been here. I have been faithful. I have done everything right. And what do I have to show for it? He's not asking, why does my brother get grace? He's asking something much deeper than that. He's asking, does any of my faithfulness actually mean anything to you? Because from where he's standing, the person who squandered everything just walked back in and got a party. And the person who stayed faithful is standing out in a field. That comparison, that's where the real pain lives. It's not just about his brother. It's about what he's been believing about his own relationship with his father all along. So here's what I think is really happening underneath what's the point. And both ASAP and the older brother are showing us the same thing from two different directions. When a faithful person asks, what's the point? they're usually not questioning God's existence. They're questioning something more specific. They're asking, is God's favor something I can earn? And if it is, why isn't it working? And if it isn't, then what am I doing all of this for? Because here's the thing that's quietly underneath it all. Most of us, without fully realizing it, have developed a kind of invisible ledger. We put in faithfulness, a little bit of obedience, we add in some sacrifice, we expect something to come back. A blessing, a breakthrough, some visible sign that God has noticed that the faithfulness is being recorded somewhere, that it's adding up to something, that in the end it will all mean something, and we will see a reward. And when the ledger doesn't balance, when we look around and the person who hasn't been faithful seems to be living better than the person who has been, the whole framework starts to crack. Because if obedience doesn't produce favor, then what exactly are we doing? That's the question the older brother was really asking. Not why does my brother get the party, but do you love me because I've been faithful? Or do you love me regardless of whether I am? That's the question he needed answer. And it's probably the question you need answered to. So what does God actually say to this question? Because I think both of these moments in scripture give us the same answer just through different doors. The father walks out to the older son. He doesn't wait for the son to come inside. That's the answer. Not I've been keeping track and you have a lot of credits, and everything's been adding up. He's not saying, Here's your reward, you've earned it. He's just saying, you are always with me. And I think that answer probably didn't feel like enough in that moment. It's not what he was looking for, because the older son wanted something he could measure. He wanted his ledger to balance. But the father was telling him something he had missed the whole time. The closeness, the being with the father every day, working alongside him wasn't the means to the blessing. It was the blessing. He had it the whole time. He just hadn't recognized it as the thing. And Asaph found the same thing, not in a spreadsheet, not in a sudden reversal of fortune, but in the sanctuary, in the presence of God. He writes after everything, he wrote this, My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. My portion. That word means inheritance. It means the thing that's yours by right. And Asaph is saying, The thing that is mine is God Himself, not what God gives, not what faithfulness produces, not what showing up every Sunday at church or tithing or praying or serving or volunteering, but God. That is either the most satisfying thing you've heard, or it could be the hardest thing you've ever heard, depending on whether you're actually experiencing it. I don't want this to stay in the Bible or to sound like a uh, you know, theological, because you came here with the question. I don't want to make sure this lands somewhere real. That's always our goal. I want to make this real for you. I want to speak to the person who is genuinely tired, who has been giving and serving and believing, and it has cost something. Real money, real time, real sacrifice. And you've been looking for the return. Not greedily, you're not looking to make out or to profit, just honestly, because you were told that faithfulness produces blessing and you're not sure you're seeing it. I'm not going to tell you that it doesn't matter. It does matter. Galatians 6 verse 9 says, Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. The harvest is real. The proper time is real, and you are not wrong for wanting to see it. But here's what I think both Asaph and the older brother teach us about the in-between, the gap between the faithfulness and the visible harvest is not empty. It is full of the same thing Asaph found in the sanctuary. It's full of the same thing the older brother had access to every day and didn't recognize. That's the presence of God. And I know that can sound like a spiritual answer to a very practical real question, but stay with me for a second, because there's a difference between a person who is faithful and feeling far from God, and a person who is faithful and genuinely close to him. From the outside, those two people may look the same. They're both in church, they're both serving, they're both going through the motions. But only one of them has found what the older brother missed, that being with the Father isn't the cost of the blessing. It is the blessing. And when you start to experience it that way, not just believe it, but actually experience it, the question starts to shift. It's no longer what's the point of all this? But it becomes, how do I stay close enough to God to receive what He's already placed inside of me? That's a different question. And it leads to a different life. So before we get to the question to Carrie this week, I want to give you something real to do with it first. Here's the honest invitation. If you've been faithful but feel far, if you've been showing up but feeling empty, it might be worth asking yourself, when did I last actually come into the presence of God and just be there? Not performing, not serving, not trying overly hard, not producing anything, just there, there with God in the moment, present with God. Because Asaph's turning point wasn't when his when his circumstances changed. It was when he entered the sanctuary. And the father didn't give the older son a party. He gave him something better than that. He came out and stood with him in the field, right there beside him. That is what God is offering in this question. Not an explanation of the ledger, not a timeline for the harvest, not making things balance out. We put in this much good, we expect that much to come back out of it. Just come close enough to find what you've been missing. Because the presence of God doesn't feel like nothing. It feels like the thing you've been faithful for all along. So here it is. Carry this one with you this week. You've been asking, what's the point? My question for you, again, the one that's underneath that is this. Does what I do actually matter to God? And here's what I believe. Yes, the answer to that question is yes. Not because you've earned his attention, but because you already have it. You are always with him. And he has never once looked at your faithfulness, the quiet, unrecognized, costly faithfulness, and missed it. He sees it. He's not grading it. He's not weighing it against the person next to you. He sees you. And what he wants more than anything is for you to stop standing in the The field and come close enough to hear him say so. The older brother stayed in the field and watched the party happening right in front of him. He had access to the Father the whole time. He just didn't know that access was the gift. Asap almost lost his faith watching people who weren't faithful live better than him. And then he entered the sanctuary, and everything he thought he understood rearranged itself. If that's where you are, if you're tired and comparing yourself to others and quietly asking what all of this is actually for, don't stop being faithful. But also don't just stop there. Come close enough to hear the answer from God. Because the question, what's the point? has an answer that is bigger than any blessing. And it starts with knowing that God already sees you. He's already walking toward you, right where you are, in the middle of your field. Next week, we're gonna sit with another question that goes somewhere close to home as we continue through our the question behind the question series. So I really hope you'll come back and join us again. But until then, I want you to keep asking, keep listening, and remember, the Father doesn't just wait inside. He'll meet you where you are. Each week, I send a short email called This Week's Question, a Quiet Invitation, and it's a simple reflection to help you stay grounded, to pay attention, to dive deeper into God's Word, and to walk with God throughout your week. You can sign up at myquestion for you.com, bringing you encouragement for your spirit and wisdom for your walk.