How to Break Free from the Bondage of Performance
- Dr. David Kyle Foster Mastering Life Ministries Director
- Updated Aug 25, 2021
Besides sin, the primary problem with the way people think and operate is performance orientation. It is regarded as a virtuous way of living that fits very nicely into the American work ethic. From day one, we are programmed for performance orientation as we learn to work for good grades by performing in school, for plaques and trophies by athletic performance, and for raises and promotions by performing at work. Performance orientation is everywhere, and it does help motivate us to do our best. The problem, however, is that people carry that performance mode into their love relationships, and they try to earn the love of God and others.
What’s the Matter with Performing for God?
1. We will fail! If I try to prove myself worthy before God by being a "good and faithful servant" by my own wisdom and power, I will eventually demonstrate just the opposite and I will end up feeling condemned. Performance orientation is a snare designed by Satan to keep us so filled with feelings of defeat that we will not go to God for fear of His wrath or disappointment.
2. Performing for God’s love creates a form of religion that Jesus rejects—a worldly version of loving and serving God. When we’re trying to earn God’s love and acceptance by performing for Him, we are in a very real sense trying to pay Him back for the Cross. We’re uncomfortable with the idea that we didn’t do anything to earn God’s forgiveness. In other words, our motivation for obeying and serving Him is not love so much as it is an attempt to return the favor or pay the debt that we feel we’ve incurred by accepting His offer of salvation. We don't mean to do this, but are so steeped in a performance mode that we don't even realize what and why we're doing it.
3. Performing for God’s love is tantamount to living by sight rather than by faith. It’s unbelief! The assurance of His love for us will never come from any performance of righteousness on our part. It will only come as we gaze with the eyes of faith on the Cross, which is God’s awesome demonstration of love for mankind.
It is hard to believe in unlimited, unconditional, unearned, unsolicited love and forgiveness. If I were God, I wouldn’t do it that way. Since I’m prone to cast God in my image, this makes it truly inconceivable that He could still love me in the face of my ongoing failure to love Him. So we tend to find ways to atone for it ourselves. We bathe in thoughts and feelings of condemnation as though we were in some way helping to balance the scales of justice. Oh, we’ll confess our sins all right, but many of us will refuse to actually embrace the forgiveness that God offers.
Performance orientation is a key foundation for the strongholds of most sin. It is a direct attack on the Cross, which is the power source for holiness. It is a gateway sin, or a key root of sin that feeds most of the sins that man commits. It is what generates the need or desire to sin.
4. If you are performing for Him, you are not having an intimate relationship with Him. Putting it another way, if you are not abiding in the Vine and receiving His life-giving love and affirmation, you are probably striving to earn the same. If you are not experiencing His affirming, healing presence on a regular basis, you are probably walking in performance orientation.
The result of living that way is massive insecurity. Just look at the world. They’re running here and running there, killing themselves with work, striving for this, trying to achieve that, experiencing this, encountering that, finding themselves, losing themselves, toning up, dialing down, going within, letting it all out, and self-helping themselves to death - trying to find peace by focusing on self, trying to find love by proving themselves worthy.
Instead, they should acknowledge their emptiness, take a running leap into the Father’s arms and exclaim, “Worthy or not, here I come!”
How to Fix the Problem
Although the reasons for being performance-oriented are many, and the damage wrought by it is extensive, the cure is singular: it is the grace that comes through Jesus Christ (Titus 2:11-14; John 1:14,17).
How does being given the grace of forgiveness when I sin persuade me not to sin? In Romans 6:1-2a, Paul broached that very question. “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?” His reply was mē genoito - a word which means “Never!” The person who excuses his sin in such a way doesn’t know God very well and consequently doesn’t love Him very deeply.
I don’t have to generate holiness in order for God to love or accept me. He has done that for me. It is Christ in me performing the righteousness, provided I yield to Him and, as one Scripture puts it, “hunger and thirst for righteousness” (Matthew 5:6).
Similarly, when faced with a battle with temptation or a trial, if I acknowledge my weakness and refuse to fight the battle myself and instead turn to God, saying, “Father, send Your power to destroy this temptation for me, to destroy this evil,” He honors my “declaration of dependence” and destroys the enemy for me as soon as its redemptive purpose is completed. That’s how it’s supposed to work. “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20a).
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In His Arms of Love
Once we are “in Christ,” God’s love and acceptance of us will never again be based on our behavior. God accepts us because we have united ourselves with His perfect Son.
The apostle Paul wrote that the grace of God makes us eager to do what is good (see Titus 2:14). How does grace make us eager to do good? In short, by causing us to fall in love with Him at deeper and deeper levels. Grace works slowly, but it works powerfully to bring about that transformation of the heart. Satan’s only defense against grace is the lies that he tells us so that we won’t believe in such love and grace. For if we believe that God loves us no matter what, and run to His arms even when we’ve failed Him, Satan has lost us.
Following God Because You Want To
One day, that grace will finally have its way in you. You’ll realize that God is not someone you have to protect yourself from. He is not the adversary. His commandments are not designed to restrict or control you, but rather, to protect and guide you to the highest order of fulfillment possible - to be transformed into His image (2 Corinthians 3:18).
Grace takes longer to work than law. But grace is permanent. It doesn’t just keep your behavior in tow. It transforms your heart, so that you go from following God because you’re supposed to, to following Him because you want to, fully and completely, from your heart. God creates oak trees and oak trees take a while to grow. But when they are grown, they are not so easily knocked down by hurricanes. That’s the genius of God’s way. His ingenuity is in the way He uses what seems foolish—letting people get away with sin—to convince them not to sin.
What You Can Do to Extricate Yourself from the Hellish Bondage of Performance
First, your first instinct will be to try to perform your way out. This has been your natural modus operandi. Consequently, you must set a close watch on your mind and heart against any such inclination.
Second, get rooted and grounded in love. Performance orientation is attached to fear because of the expectation of punishment. However, we read in 1 John 4:18, “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment."
Third, practice believing the great and precious promises of Scripture—not just intellectually, but from your heart. As Romans 6:11 suggests, “Reckon yourself dead to sin and alive to Jesus Christ.” Consider as fact the statement in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
Fourth, every time you catch yourself performing for God—stop what you’re doing and say, “I’m not going to do it this way - I am loved by God regardless of my behavior. I will love Him and serve Him for that reason alone!” You’ll probably have to do this a thousand times a day for a while until it starts becoming a natural way of thinking.
This is not an easy turnaround. It takes significant time and attention. It takes complete dependence on God working in you to bring it about, but it is worth every second that you put into it.
Fifth, the Bible suggests that we need to forcefully take the kingdom of God (see Luke 16:16), yet that we are to rejoice in our weakness so that the power of God may rest on us (see 2 Corinthians 12:9-10). So in a seeming paradox, we are to take ground for the Kingdom aggressively—by resting in God’s power to do it through us. This is very different from a straightforward “performance” model.
Sixth, we must learn how to live by faith rather than by feelings. Problem is, our feelings are notoriously unreliable.
To combat this state of affairs, we need to immerse ourselves in the presence of God and allow Him to correct our thinking. We need to fix our thoughts and our eyes on Jesus (Hebrews 3:1; 12:2), allowing the Word of Christ to dwell in us richly (Colossians 3:16). We need to become partakers of truth and partners with God.
Finally, we need to enter into a lifestyle of worship, rather than only using it as a means to please our senses or to get what we want from God. When we are immersed in performance and goal achievement, not only do we tend to manipulate and use people, we do the same to God without even realizing it. However, true-hearted worship is vital to growing in Christlikeness because it is the hearth in which we are transformed into His image (2 Corinthians 3:18). It is also a key component of spiritual warfare, and it is a discipline that helps shift the focus from self to God.
And that's what it's all about - turning from self to God!
This article adapted from Dr. David Kyle Foster's book The Sexual Healing Reference Edition
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