What Are You Trying to Prove?

What are you trying to accomplish so you can finally feel significant?

There is a kind of striving that looks like faithfulness, discipline, and even obedience, while underneath it is being fueled by something entirely different.

Sometimes we are not working because God has asked us to work. We are working because something inside of us desperately wants to be seen.

We want validation, affirmation, and acceptance. We want someone to notice us and reassure us that our lives actually matter. When that desire goes unrecognized, we can spend enormous amounts of energy trying to obtain through performance what the Father desires to give us through affection.

I know this feeling, not simply from my past, but in my present. There is still so much in me that wants to use my gifting to be seen, affirmed, and validated. I can feel the temptation to make something of myself through what God has given me.

Yet the Holy Spirit keeps reminding me that He is not looking for me to become impressive. He is looking for me. He is not impressed with the success of my gifting if the very gift He gave me leaves me enslaved to the need for affirmation and living like an orphan. What good is it to become successful in my calling while becoming increasingly dependent upon success to know who I am?

I would rather be a son who remains close to the Father than a gifted man who succeeds while living like an orphan.

This is one of the subtle manifestations of an orphan spirit.

An orphan believes significance must be achieved. A son receives significance through belonging.

An orphan focuses on what they need to do to become significant. A son focuses on the One they were created to know in order to truly be alive.

Before Jesus preached a sermon, healed the sick, cast out a demon, or went to the cross, the Father declared, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”

The Father established affection before public accomplishment.

Yet many of us live in the opposite direction. We attempt to accomplish our way into affection. We perform hoping someone will finally tell us we are valuable. We pursue destiny hoping accomplishment will give us identity.

But destiny was never meant to become the center of our relationship with God.

Sonship is primarily about belonging, not accomplishing.

Destiny is beautiful. God created us with purpose. But sons do not accomplish their way into belonging. They accomplish because they already belong.

Son first. Destiny second.

Belonging first. Accomplishment second.

Abiding first. Fruitfulness second.

Jesus said in John 15, “Remain in me, as I also remain in you.” The branch does not strain to prove that it is fruitful. It simply remains connected to the vine.

Great fruit is not the obsession of the branch. Remaining is.

So maybe the question in this season is not simply, “Where am I striving?” but “What is the orphan spirit asking me to do that I need to stop obeying?”

Maybe it is telling you to build something so you can finally feel significant. To accomplish something so you can feel valuable. To become successful so people will respect you. To keep producing so you will not be forgotten. To prove yourself to someone who overlooked you.

What is it telling you that you must do in order to be validated, affirmed, accepted, or significant?

Recognize it. Bring it into the light. And then refuse to obey it.

There are times when spiritual warfare does not look like doing more. It looks like refusing to do what insecurity is demanding of you. When work has become our attempt to manufacture identity, rest becomes resistance.

Do not build something just so you can be validated. Do not pursue something simply so you can be accepted. Do not accomplish something just so you can finally believe you matter.

Instead, bring what you are desperately seeking to Jesus.

What are you actually looking for underneath all your striving?

Significance? You have been chosen in Christ.

Acceptance? You have been welcomed by the Father.

Affirmation? You are His beloved.

Belonging? You have been adopted into His family.

Value? You were purchased at an immeasurable price.

Perhaps the deepest invitation of this season is to discover that what you have been striving to obtain through accomplishment has already been given to you in Christ.

The goal is not to stop accomplishing. It is to stop asking accomplishment to give you what only Christ can.

So ask the Holy Spirit honestly:

What am I striving to obtain that is already mine in Christ?

And then ask Him:

What do I need to stop obeying so I can learn to receive it?

You do not have to strive to be seen by the One whose eyes have never left you.

You already belong.

And when belonging becomes the center again, destiny becomes the fruit.