Let’s be real. I have doubts sometimes. You have doubts sometimes. We are humans. We fall short. There are times when we feel as if our last shred of hope has just dissolved in a sea of terrifying situations. We look for other things to hold onto, even though, in reality, the only One Who is able to bring us through is God. Yet, when we face life, we sometimes forget that there is more than what we see right now.
Lately, I’ve been “cruising” in life. I’ve been complacent where I am in life because I’ve lost all my strength from fighting on my own. I’ve allowed weeds to spring up & take the place of all that I, as God’s child, am designed to do. I’ve allowed my mind to be so filled with the things of this world that I’ve lost sight of my own purpose. In my pursuit of being open-minded & seeking to understand what others believe & think, even if I don’t agree with them, I’ve forgotten that I have my own beliefs as well, & that holding to those beliefs is not a bad thing. I know God, & I’ve seen His hands working in my life. Yet, I care so much about understanding other things that I fail to understand God the way I should. The more I learn about this world, & the more I absorb its ways of thinking & doing, the more I try to be self-reliant. Yet, when I do this, I become less independent than I was before, because I lose my sense of direction. You see, we all come to different crossroads throughout life. We come to points where we fall away from God & into our own ideas of what life should be. Or, we get restless, sometimes even wondering if we’re missing out on something else when we live the Christian life. But, the more comfortable I get in this world, the more lost I feel. Life without God is depressing, terrifying, & empty.
It’s easy to think that I can be a perfect Christian. As long as I go to church, read my Bible every day, & pray pretty regularly, I’m good, right? I can feel proud of myself when I think about my “accomplishments” as a Christian, but when I do this, I’m missing the point completely, & I’m mirroring the Pharisees that Jesus rebuked throughout the New Testament. God doesn’t tell me to be perfect. He doesn’t tell me to fix myself on my own strength, or to be a self-made person, & yet somehow I fall into this idea that I am supposed to be that way. I always see something else that I can change to improve myself, but then I see so many things that I end up not fixing any of them because I don’t know where to start. I get so absorbed in what I am, in what I could be, & in what I’m supposed to be, that I completely toss aside the reality that is being a Christian.
God really doesn’t want me to polish myself up before I come to Him. He really doesn’t expect me to live my entire life without making a mistake, sinning, or falling short of what I should be. He doesn’t expect me to be the perfect Christian with all the right words & all the most powerful prayers & the most beautiful praises & the largest amount of converts to Christianity. He wants me as I am, not as I am to be. Before writing these words, I was listening to an acoustic version of the hymn, Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing. The following words rang out to me:
“Jesus sought me when a stranger, wandering from the fold of God.”
Hearing these words & singing them touched my heart. I know the hymn, I've heard it many times, but this time it made me think & reflect. Jesus wasn’t out looking for the best preachers or the biggest spiritual giants. He was out looking for the broken, for the weak, for the lost, & for the empty-hearted. He wasn’t asking me to perfect myself & then join the club of perfect people, but rather He was saying, “Come to Me, & I will make you whole. I will show you great & unsearchable things that you cannot ever understand on your own (Jeremiaiah 33:3). I will help you grow, & I will teach you the way of life. I will help you when you fall, & I will lift you up when you can’t stand on your own. I will strengthen you, I will fight for you, & I will unlock the door for you to enter into My Kingdom.”
Don’t fall into the trap of believing that God is an unapproachable God, or that you aren’t good enough to be known by Him. Hebrews 4:16 says that we can approach Him boldly, & besides that, If God didn’t love us, He wouldn’t have let His own Son die on a cross & make the way for us to know Him once again, even knowing that we wouldn’t always choose Him. That, my friends, is love, & it is beautiful. God loves us, & no matter what comes our way, or what way we choose, we know that His love is unconditional, & for that, I am ever so thankful.
Have you been going through struggles in life recently? What are you learning as you face these struggles? I know it’s hard to share, but God is working through each of us, & no matter how ugly our mess, He turns it into something beautiful!
Blessings, Allison