Today I want to start on the spiritual maintenance that I wrote about on Saturday. First off, looking at an assumption that I've lived with for years, trying to fight against it the whole time: "I'm not good enough." The second assumption is closely related, and it pops up about as often, but a little more subtly: "I need to do something to prove myself." Both are areas that God has been working on with me, but I want to address them because they keep showing up, and maybe walking through them in writing will help myself and others not to face them without hope.
I'd like to begin with some truth from God's Word. Here is the way God really feels about us. First of all, in comparison with God's perfection, I really can't measure up. Romans 3:12 quotes the Psalms in saying, "...there is no one who does good, not even one." In Mark 10:18, Jesus even says, "...'No one is good - except God alone.' " Well that was encouraging, how about what I can do to prove myself? Isaiah 64:6 says, "All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away." I can totally identify with these verses, and they seem to confirm my assumptions and my feelings of failure, but if I stop there I have an incomplete picture, and that's exactly what the enemy of my soul, and yours, wants. We might start to think that we're insignificant to God, that He could never love us, and those ideas are totally untrue. Psalm 139:17-18 says, "How precious are your thoughts concerning me, God! How vast is the sum of them! / Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand..." 1 Thessalonians 1:4 says, "For we know, brothers and sisters loved by God, that he has chosen you," and Ephesians 5:2 tells us that, "...Christ loved us and gave himself up for us..." Wow. It just doesn't get much more significant than that. Clearly we mean a lot to God, and He loves us dearly... but is that only once I get my act together and prove myself worthy to Him? Romans 5:8 spells it out, "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." In Mark 2:17, Jesus Himself said, "...'...I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.' " How can this be? Don't I have to do something? Ephesians 2:8 says, "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God." Here is the hope for our significance, our righteousness, and our worthiness. It all comes from God. 1 Corinthians 1:30 says, "It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God - that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption."
What God says about you and I blows my assumptions out of the water. My worth comes from Him, and what I do, I do for Him, not to prove myself, but simply because I can - because I love Him and He loves me. On that note, I'd like to end this post with one of my favourite verses, Zephaniah 3:17, "The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing."
Oh, one more thing. If you're feeling like you're the only person you know who feels this way, you're not. It's not always visible on the outside. I once had a friend in all seriousness ask me why everything always went positive for me, and this not long after I had lost both my full-time and part-time jobs, had been dumped by my girlfriend, and was struggling pretty hard with feeling like a failure. Two things to learn from that. The first is to share what's going on inside with those you can trust, so they can see the real you and encourage you. The second is that you're not alone. Very likely the person you're talking to about it may have experienced similar feelings, and you can both build one another up... and isn't that what the family of God is supposed to be about?
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