It won’t happen until you’re perfect. Until you – quit smoking, quit having sexual feelings, quit loving him, quit biting your nails (seriously?!), etc. I don’t know why I let the enemy get under my skin like this, but I do. He comes around constantly telling me that the Lord is not going to be able to accomplish the things He has promised to do in my life and my family and my husband, until I have first made some kind of accomplishment. I keep falling into the trap. I keep telling myself “Well, if God told me that I will not be a smoker at the time that my husband is saved, that means I need to quit smoking. If God told me I was going to have completed this book by the time my husband is saved, I need to hurry up and finish reading it. If God told me…” I am sorry self, but when did God ever need you to do something in order to accomplish the good work He set out to do?!
Ephesians 2:8-9 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.”
This seems like a ridiculous struggle to me, but it is seriously a daily issue. Having this idea that God needs me to be perfect in order to accomplish the things He has to do. And that is just not possible! I know, it is also not just an excuse to sin though. I know I need to live life daily, trying the best I can to follow after Christ, but at the end of the day, I am human. I fail. I fail every single day. And I can never achieve perfection. I beat myself up for my failures too, but it is something that I need to recognize Gods hand in my life in too.
2 Corinthians 12:8-10 Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
So this weakness is not an excuse to continue sinning, but it is a chance for God to build strength in me. Lord, I am struggling. I don’t like feeling this need to accomplish. I know that is not from you. I know that you are satisfied to operate in my weakness and that you forgive me when I make mistakes. I don’t want to use that as an excuse to sin, but I also know it doesn’t help for me to beat myself up over mistakes. Help me to walk the middle ground, trying my best to follow in your footsteps and to recognize that this is not anything I do on my own. All of the glory is yours Lord. I need you.
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