Well, I’ve thought a lot in the last few days about how to wrap up this series I’ve been trying to share about my experience at Catalyst.  I’m pretty sure I could keep going and probably end up at “Part 14” or something like that…but wow, at that point everyone should just plan to go to the conference for themselves.  Though I’m sure the influence of the many powerful messages I heard at Catalyst will find its way into some later posts…I think 5 is probably a good stopping point for a series.  Unless of course, you are a Hebrew scholar and 7 would be best…but that, I am not.

I was excited to hear Joel Houston of Hillsong United lead worship and speak.  I had never heard him live before and his music has been very influential in my life.  He opened with reading Psalm 51, a psalm David wrote after being confronted about committing adultery with Bathsheba.  The psalm is really a prayer for forgiveness and speaks of David’s desire for renewel and cleansing from the One he had sinned against.

Then Houston said this, “We do not need to try to impress God with what we do for Him…but embrace what He has already done for us.”

Simple, I know.  But I forget it all the time and maybe you do too.

We sure spend a great deal of our lives trying to impress those around us.  Why do we do what we do the way we do it?  What drives us to make the decisions we make?  What makes us relentlessly pursue status, titles, education, experience, money, relationships…whatever?   We are kind of obsessed with the food we eat, the phones we have (or don’t have), the conversations we have, the car we drive, the clothes we wear, the books we read, the music we listen to…or even the places we go.

We are trying to capture exclusivity.

So we dress to impress. We tell stories to impress.  We tweet to impress.  We blog to impress.  We long for acceptance and will fill the void with whatever seems to do the trick, even if its temporary…because we don’t know or don’t believe our true identity.  Try getting a job without trying to impress your potential employer.  (Other than the guy in Office Space, I don’t know of anyone who has actually tried to be so transparent and not put their best foot forward and it not get them kicked off Jim Collins’ bus…but that guy got promoted!)  We’re pretenders…posers.

We are so invested in impressing others, that it only makes sense that we would attempt to impress God with all the cool stuff we can can do for Him.  When we fashion Him in our image, it almost becomes natural to think that our pretenses work on Him too.  So we approach Him like we have earned some kind of leverage, maybe even like we can do things without him.  Its as if we believe He needs us…when the truth is, He just wants us.

God is not impressed by our attempts to prove ourselves worthy.  God is not impressed with our motives and agendas to make ourselves seem better than we are.  As Cornell West said later on in the conference, “At the end of the day, the best we can be is redeemed sinners.”

Jesus loves unimpressive people.  Jesus saves unimpressive people.  And that is impressive.