“This monument is over nineteen hundred years old,” our tour guide announced as we approached a 98-foot high statue of the Roman Emperor Trajan.

“Imagine it,” the woman continued, “over nineteen hundred years old!”

“Does she know any specific dates?” I wondered aloud. Of all the tours we went on during our seven-day Mediterranean cruise, this was the only one where the guide took an excruciating amount of time to say nothing in particular about everything we saw.

Bill was, not annoyed, but amused by her generic commentary as we turned left at Trajan’s Column and entered the Roman Forum, which was once the heart of ancient Rome.

“We’re never going to make it to the Colosseum,” I insisted as the guide went on about the temple ruins—which were also, over nineteen hundred years old.

Bill assured me that we would eventually make it to the largest amphitheatre ever built in the Roman Empire. When we did, the view from the top was incredible as we looked down at the site where gladiators, Christians and wild animals once battled to the death in front of fifty thousand spectators. Knowing that an estimated five hundred thousand people died in the Colosseum games raised a question: How could the Romans have so little regard for human life?

I left without an answer as we followed our tour guide to a local hotel for an authentic Italian meal. After walking toward the least occupied end of a long row of tables, I sat down next to a retired couple from Florida who Bill and I dined with during our tour of Florence and Pisa the day before. They were a delightful pair and I was happy to have them with us in Rome, not just for the conversation, but also for the great picture the husband took of Bill and I in front of the Colosseum.

Having exhausted all other small talk at the restaurant in Florence, the man waited until after the server had filled our water glasses before asking: “What do you do for a living?”

“I’m a Christian writer.”            

Although we hadn’t yet been to Vatican City (we were going there after lunch), my words prompted a confession as the man turned to me and said: “My wife was raised Catholic. She took our kids to mass every Sunday when they were growing up.”

“I don’t go to church,” he added.

“Why not?”

“I’m a moral person,” he explained, as if that were enough.

I was surprised by the man's answer: How could someone who was good at taking pictures of others, be so out of focus when it came to his own life?

Our conversation reminded me of a time when I thought that I had done enough to please God. I was living in Lincoln, Nebraska and had spent most of the morning and early afternoon in service to others. After helping everyone from a kindergarten teacher, to an elderly neighbor, to a single mom in need of help with childcare, I naively decided that God wouldn’t mind if I took the rest of the day off.

Not long after reaching this conclusion, a friend called me with a simple request. “I am getting new tires tomorrow morning and need to drop my car off tonight so the mechanics can work on it when the shop opens,” Dan explained. “Could you pick me up a little before five o’clock and give me a ride home?”

With that request, I was learning what it meant to be a true servant, like the one R. T. Kendall wrote about in his book Imitating Christ. “A servant is to be always available and accessible ....” Kendall wrote. “When his master changes the pattern of work, he is adaptable and adjusts to it without complaining, accepting inconveniences without opening his mouth. That is the mark of a true servant.”[i]

I wanted to be this kind of person. Thankfully, Katie and Hollie didn't complain as I buckled them into their car seats and promised that the task would take less than thirty minutes to complete. Dan was waiting when I arrived at the shop. I helped him into the van and closed the passenger door after his canes were safely inside. We were half-way to his apartment when God revealed a second, unexpected assignment.

“What’s the matter?” I asked when I saw Dan searching through his pockets.

“I forgot to take my apartment key off the keychain before I left it with the person at the shop.”

“We can go back for it.”

“The place closed at five.”

“Can we get another key from the office in your apartment complex?”

“They close at five, too.”

Not one to give up, I kept trying to think of another option until it became clear that I was it.

“You can spend the night in our guest room and I’ll drive you back to the shop after it opens in the morning.”

“You’ve already done enough,” he argued.

When I insisted that I would not take no for an answer, Dan reluctantly agreed to my offer. A few minutes later, I was helping my friend into our house. As I held the front door so he could walk through, I understood what King Solomon meant when he wrote this in Proverbs 19:21: “Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it is the LORD's purpose that prevails.”

The LORD’s purpose for having Dan spend the night was to teach me that, in serving and salvation, we don’t get to decide when we’ve done enough ...  God does.

It was a lesson that the man sitting beside me in Rome had yet to learn. Did he really think that Jesus came to save everyone from their sins ... but him?

The problem with self-sufficient thinking is that it goes against Christian living as we place ourselves back under the law that Jesus came to fulfill. I know this because, for years, I fell for the legalist lure of trying to earn my way to heaven. Despite warnings from biblical heroes like King David who stated that God desires, not our burnt offerings, but the sacrifices of “a broken spirit” and “a broken and contrite heart,”[ii] I was too busy trying to prove my worth to realize that someone already had.