Do The Math: Stop Cooking the Books and Get Honest with God

There is a thing all of us do — quietly, constantly, without ever really thinking about it.

We run the math.

Every relationship you have is a low-grade math problem you are solving in real time. Your spouse walks in the door with the look that says it has been a long day — you math the response. Your coworker says something passive-aggressive in the group chat — you math whether it is worth pushing back. Your kid asks for one more bedtime story when you are dog-tired — you math whether you have it in you. Somebody cuts you off in traffic and somehow the math always returns the same answer: honk, fume, gesture.

Most of the time we do not even notice we are doing it. We just call it being normal.

Sunday at Peak City we sat in Luke 7 together — Jesus at dinner in the home of a Pharisee named Simon, and a woman with an alabaster jar who interrupted the polite dinner with the loudest, most undignified worship in the room. And here is what the Lord pressed into me as we sat with that story:

We are running the math for everybody but God.

Boss. Group chat. In-laws. Neighbors. The people in the pew next to us. We are constantly calibrating our faces, our words, our tone, our worship — making sure everyone in the room thinks well of us. But God? We have never actually run the numbers on Him. We have never sat down and done the math on who He is, who we are, and what He has done for us.

Until you do.

Until you do, you will keep living your life for everybody else. You will calculate your worship. You will calibrate your obedience. You will measure your devotion against what your friends will think, what your coworkers will think, what your family will think. You will live a faith that is balanced for everybody in the room except the one Person it is supposed to be for.

Simon shows us what that looks like up close. He invited Jesus over to dinner — a savvy social move with his Pharisee friends. But he did the relational math and decided not to treat Jesus like a guest of honor. No water for His feet. No greeting kiss. No oil for His head. Jesus is not even mad about the etiquette — He is naming what Simon's calculated, comfortable, culturally acceptable hospitality actually was: a faith that costs nothing.

The woman is doing math too. She is just doing it from a different starting number. She walks into a room she was not invited to. She brings a jar of perfume worth a year of wages. She kneels at His feet. She cries. She wipes His feet with her hair. She kisses them. She empties the jar.

It looks extravagant. Jesus calls it accurate.

That line stopped me in my tracks all afternoon. She isn't extravagant. She's accurate. Everyone else in the room is under-reacting. Everyone else is the one who is off.

Here is where the Lord lays it on us:

Simon cooked the books.

Corporate fraudsters cook the books — they lie about their debts, inflate their assets, doctor the numbers. We do the same thing with our souls. We hear a sermon and we apply it to somebody else before ourselves. We keep a tidy record of everybody else's wrongs and a stack of valid reasons for our own. We tell ourselves a few good moments outweigh a lifetime of struggle and hypocrisy.

For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it. (James 2:10)

One sin. Guilty of all of it. The wages of sin is death. That is the actual math.

Can we just stop cooking the books and be real for a minute?

When you stop cooking the books — when you get honest about your soul, when you quit pretending — you can finally receive the very real love of God for the very real broken places. And in that place, staying close to your brokenness, doing the math — there is nothing you could give Him that costs too much. Who cares what anyone in the room thinks? You're free. You're forgiven.

Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven, as her great love has shown. (Luke 7:47)

We do not worship for love. We worship from love. We love because He first loved us. The math always starts with what He has already done.

I am a nobody from nowhere Kentucky. I was a teenager hopeless and helpless and headed in the wrong direction. God could have been done with me. Instead, He forgave me. He gave me Brittany. He gave me my kids. He gave me this church. Anytime I get a little prideful, I remember the math, and the math gets me back on my knees.

That is what He wants for you, too.

Stop cooking the books. Do the math. Let love be the answer.

We'd love to have you join us on Sunday.