Perfect Failure

Well, we are officially eleven days into the new year and eleven days into my January resolution and I am officially exhausted from blogging.

Blogxhausted, if you will.

I think it has less to do with my actual blog, than it does with life.  Something about the new year is exhausting.  I think it has a lot to do with the pressure we put on ourselves.  We think ‘this is it, this is the year’.  The year we get organized, get in shape, get in touch with God, get happy, get perfect. 

It’s difficult to live like that.  Trust me.  I know.

I have spent most of my life trying to be perfect.  As a child and teen I was a ‘good girl’.  I could regale you with stories of my goodness, of how involved I was in church, in service, et cetera.  But it would be pointless, because it was very, very wrong.  Unfortunately, somewhere along the road I had decided that what God required of me was my good behavior.  As a young adult it seemed to me that this was what separated Christians from non-Christians.  Christians didn’t cuss, we didn’t drink and we didn’t go to see R-rated movies.  I began to believe that if I simply didn’t do these things and did go to church and have a quiet time each day then God and I were in good standing with one another.

I’m ashamed to say that I was a senior in college before I realized this made no sense.  I had spent most of my life trying my very hardest, with all of my abilities, to be perfect, to be good, to do what was right and I simply couldn’t do it anymore.  I knew I could never be enough.  Then I heard a pastor speak who said, quite plainly,  that there was nothing that I could do good enough to buy my way into heaven.  He also said that everything that could be done, was already done- on the Cross.  At the Cross, all my failures were paid for.

He went on to say that God was not interested in my begrudging submission, in other words- dragging myself to church every Sunday and not cussing, drinking or movie-watching out of fear.  But that God was interested in my heart and in having an intimate relationship with me.

It’s difficult for me to explain how much this has changed my life, because it’s given me a freedom I didn’t know existed.  I haven’t gone crazy watching every R-Rated movie or drinking any alcoholic beverage I could get my hands on, because it’s a different kind of freedom.  For all of those years I was playing God- trying to make myself worthy through my own good behavior, as if I had control.  When all along there was a much better God who had already done all the work at Calvary.

I robbed myself of so much joy through the years because I honestly believed that if I could just… do more, be more, act better, love harder than He would find it within Himself to love and accept me.  But the thing is, God didn’t come to save some future / perfect version of me- He came to save me.  As I am. 

In other words, GRACE.

My prayer for us all in the new year is that we stop setting ourselves up for disaster.  Stop trying to be better, be more, do more and realize God has already done it for us.  Maybe this is the year we allow God to make us more and more like Him and less like us.

I can assure you we won’t be perfect, but maybe that’s for the best.

 

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2: 8-10)