Sorry. In my own way, I thought I had answered your question by pointing out that I’m not at all asserting this means I can disregard God’s will. 

No doubt, there are conditions to which I must surrender to enter Christ. Romans 5:2 says that faith is the access to God’s grace. Romans 6:3 says we are baptized into Christ. Certainly, there are things I must do to be in Christ. And in that sense, I must definitely do God’s will in order to be in Christ.

Any disagreement we have on this point is not doctrinal. Rather it has to do with the nature of writing.

The title of this post and the explanation of my point should be taken as elliptical. That is, there are understood concepts that I felt didn’t need to be spelled out because I knew that folks like you would understand the “left out” principles. This is a biblical figure of speech used by Jesus in passages such as Matthew 6:19-21; 25-26; 11:18 and Paul in I Corinthians 1:17. Words that Jesus felt should be understood were left out. After all, Jesus is not telling us ownership of any material good or savings accounts are wrong. Not is He teaching us that we should have no concern whatsoever about survival. Nor did he mean that John did eat or drink anything. Paul certainly baptized people and taught baptism (unlike those evangelicals who misuse Paul’s statement to claim that the passage means baptism is unnecessary). This use of ellipsis often generates another figure of speech called hyperbole. Which is an exaggeration to make a point. It is similar to Jesus’ use of hyperbole in Luke 14:26. Jesus doesn’t really want us to hate our parents.We are to understand that this is a comparison to our love for God.

The point of using such a figure is to attract attention, to cause people to stop in their tracks and say, “Wait a minute! That can’t be right. What on earth does that mean?” And then force them to think through it, such as Jesus’ statement that we must lose our lives to save them in Matthew 16:25 (we both know Jesus isn’t saying we must die a martyr’s death to be saved, but it could be taken that way if someone ignored the figure of speech). The fact that I’ve attracted your attention and caused you to think about this means my writing device did its job with you.

Your answer to my question about a day seeking to be in Jesus gets to the point I really think we need to see. The issue is about motivation. I fear that too often we are motivated to do God’s will in the attempt to get ourselves into Christ, as if in some way we can save ourselves by our strength and prove ourselves good enough to be saved by how well we keep God’s will. I believe that motivation is destined to failure (Romans 7). However, when I realize that Philippians 2:12-13 says that the only reason any work I do for my salvation is worthwhile is because of God’s strength working in me, then I understand that my main goal today is to know God, to know Jesus, to connect to God so I can do His will. It is about motivation. If I am motivated by a desire to somehow save myself by my own strength, I’m going to be lacking. If I’m motivated by a desire to connect to God so I can be saved by His strength, then I’ll grow. I’ll abide in Jesus and I’ll do His will.

Having known quite a few evangelicals who believe they go to heaven by accepting Jesus into their lives and seeing how they try to connect to Jesus, I think some of them would say the exact same thing you did. But then we have to discuss with them exactly what it is they are learning as they read the Lord’s Word. Some of them would say they don’t have to worry about it, they are already connected. That would be said. I have no doubt, those who want to say that would misuse my post just as they would misuse the Bible. However, looking at how some baptized Christians live, I think we would get the same split response from them. Some would say exactly what you said, and some would say (or at least live) “It doesn’t matter, I’ve been baptized and I go to a church of Christ. I’m good.” These might even misuse my post as they misuse the Bible.

If there is one thing I’ve learned from reading the Bible, it does no good to try to write things in such a way that no one can misuse the writing to their own ends if they want to badly enough. Even God did not provide a revelation or written word that could not possibly be misconstrued if someone wanted it to mean something other than what it says badly enough. God even used figures of speech that could be purposefully misunderstood. So, while I try not to be too cavalier, I’ve also given up on believing that I can write something in such a way that if the evangelicals or atheists or even Christians wanted to they couldn’t misconstrue it. I just don’t think it is possible for me, a mere human, to accomplish that. Therefore, I make my points, using the figures of speech in my arsenal and I trust everyone to be as honest about my writing, keeping it in context of everything else they’ve read from me and comparing it to the Bible to figure out what I’m saying and how it fits together. That’s the best I can do. In the end, I simply hope it causes someone to stop and think and then compare to their own lives.

For instance, whether you are willing to word it the way I did in this post. I hope you came away from it saying you need to do your dead-level best to know Jesus and be in Him (cf. Philippians 3:2-15).

Finally, thanks for the encouragement on the Psalms. I’ve truly enjoyed studying them anew. They are becoming more and more meaningful to me. I hope a renewed interest in them does the same for you.