Why Christians Sometimes Feel Their Christian Life Doesn’t Matter

Each of us will give an account of himself to God.Romans 14:12Imagine a university student named John, eating in the cafeteria. He hears about a new course that all first years are required to take: “It sounds like a lot of work!”“Don’t worry,” says Bill, a second year student, “It’s one of those non-examinable courses. It doesn’t count toward your degree. Just sign in occasionally to show you were there.”So, John goes to class the first day and begins taking notes, but something inside him says, Why bother? It doesn’t really count. So, the rest of the week John shows up late and only hears the second half of each lecture. After that he doesn’t show up at all; he sleeps in instead.On the last day of class, the teacher announces: “Please submit all the notes you’ve taken for this class. They will be placed in your file as samples of the quality of your work, along with your reference, for the consideration of future employers.”John browsed his notes for the ten-week course: Only one full page of notes and four half pages. He realises that his shoddy work will be the first thing seen by a potential employer, so John rushes to the teacher, “This isn’t fair! If I knew it mattered, I would have done better work.”“This course doesn’t count toward your degree,” said the teacher, “but your mistake was to conclude that it doesn’t count for anything.”Have you flirted with the idea that since your Christian life doesn’t count toward your salvation that it doesn’t count for anything at all?