Growing up, I had a love-hate relationship with Sunday dinners. On the one hand, it was a good time being around the dinner table with my parents and my younger brother. On the other hand, it was a time when our parents made certain we ate all of our food. But it wasn’t just finishing our food that irritated me; it was the precise order in which we had to do it.
My parents had this insane obsession with making sure we didn’t just go straight for the meat, leaving the rice and vegetables. If they happened to overlook this, Kool-Aid and or ice cream were out of the question.
This eating pattern became so ingrained in me that at 40, I still can’t eat meat without first eating everything else.
As an adult, I understand what my parents thought they were doing. They didn’t want us wasting food, but they wanted to ensure we weren’t feasting on junk either. What they’ve actually done, however, is program my mind into believing that things I enjoy must be reserved until after I’ve accomplished or completed something.
We’ve somehow found creatively torturous ways to delay enjoyment and call it discipline. There’s this hustle-and-grind-sleep-when-you’re-dead culture that effectively leads to nervous system overload and physical burnout. We’ve been misled to believe that taking the time to enjoy the life we’re building somehow delays the process.
I’m sure there are many times that God roars with laughter at our arrogance. It’s absolutely arrogant to think that He’s obligated to honor our timelines. It’s quite presumptuous to expect life to do the same.
The Problem: When Enjoyment Becomes a Reward Instead of a Gift
We often confuse discipline with obsession while teetering dangerously close to manipulation. There’s nothing wrong with having goals. As a matter of fact, God wants us to have goals. He wants us to have a life grounded in Godly discipline. What He is against is making the goals an idol that every waking moment serves.
There are so many things we delay and opportunities we miss when we treat enjoyment as a transaction. Vacations, time with loved ones, sunsets, and sunrises are all things we fool ourselves into thinking we can enjoy later. Interactions become less about genuine connection and more about opportunity.
The very things God designed to restore us are often the first things we sacrifice because we’ve convinced ourselves they matter least.
Because achievements take time, the habits we build around our pursuit slowly become part of our everyday lives, and the longer they’re ingrained, the harder they are to break.
What Makes This Dangerous?
Beyond the things I mentioned earlier, this transactional treatment of enjoyment has far greater implications for us spiritually.
God has given us all things richly to enjoy (1 Tim. 6:17). Everything worth celebrating and enjoying is a gift to us from God (James 1:17). Christ’s entire purpose for being born is so that we may have life to the full until it overflows (John 10:10).
Throughout the Bible, including the verses shared, we clearly see that there’s nothing we’ve done or can ever do to deserve God’s goodness. His goodness to us is all a gift freely given. We must understand this because the way we treat ourselves as we pursue our goals frames how we see God.
The moment we treat enjoyment as something to be delayed because it must first be earned, we limit our ability to receive anything from Him. Notice, I did not say that His ability to give becomes limited.
Our relationship with and to God is based solely on faith. Faith isn’t just limited to a belief in Him or that He exists. It’s trusting that His love doesn’t need to be earned and that His goodness isn’t a reward for perfection. His goodness isn’t a payment for our effort; it’s a gift given by a loving Father to His children.
Ultimately, delaying enjoyment is dangerous because it convinces us we are responsible for both the journey and the destination. Our actions become guided by the false narrative that God cannot be trusted to bring this thing to completion.
It then begs the question: If we cannot trust God to get across the finish line, how can we trust Him in our everyday living?
Different Way of Thinking
Let me be clear. God is not against discipline. What He strongly opposes is pride that says we are solely responsible for the vision, provision, and execution of our goals. Pride suggests that taking the time to enjoy His gifts delays our progress. It suggests that having an all-or-nothing approach to our goals is the only way they’ll be achieved.
So, what then are we supposed to do? The answer is to rest.
This is such a heavy word. It’s often misinterpreted as a call to laziness, careless living, or general inactivity. Its true definition is found in John 15:5.
In this passage of scripture, Jesus doesn’t tell the branch to work harder, but instead He invites it to remain connected to Him. The branch isn’t responsible for creating fruit through its own effort. It simply produces what naturally grows from its connection to the vine.
This misconception that we’ve bought is likely the reason we find ourselves perpetually exhausted. We’ve mistaken self-reliance for discipline and control for stewardship. We’ve taken responsibility for outcomes we were never designed to create.
What this now means is when we find ourselves grinding our way through life, we can be sure we’ve disconnected from Christ.
Stay with me.
The whole purpose of our living is to produce fruit. Fruit for some of us may be a business, a ministry, a profession, a talent, really anything that He can use to reflect His love both to us and through us. The prescribed method for producing this fruit is through our connection and union with Him. It was designed this way because all things come from Christ.
The vision in our mind, the purpose in our heart, the goals that we’ve prayed about are all from Him, but that’s not where His participation ends. His help extends to the method, the journey, and the plan in its entirety.
The position of rest that He’s called us to is not outside of Him, with us just being lazily dragged along through life. Our position of rest is in our abiding in Him. It’s through this union that He tells us where to go, when to arrive, who to speak to, where to put our money, who to accept as an investor, and the list goes on.
This direction doesn’t interrupt our journey, nor does it disrupt our enjoyment during it. Instead, it is revealed in our living. Abiding in our union with Christ doesn’t remove us from the work; it teaches us to work without making ourselves our own source.
My parents taught me that the things I enjoyed belong at the end of the meal. I recognize that they enforced delayed enjoyment as a way to teach self-control and gratitude. What that translated to in my adult life was believing that enjoyment belongs at the end of the journey rather than during it.
I’m learning that God doesn’t work this way. Throughout scripture, He’s invited us to find joy in the work we do but also in our everyday living. This is important because there will always be another goal to pursue and another reason to postpone enjoying the things that make life worth living.
God never intended us to wait until everything was complete.
We are allowed to enjoy the life we’re building while we’re still building it.