This morning I read an excerpt from She Reads Truth that hit me pretty hard.
"But even as I became more sure of who God was, I became less sure of who I was in relation to Him. The little girl who stood unabashedly before God, eager hands ready to serve, became a teenager who hid like Mother Eve beneath fig leaves of shame. It was no longer Moses’ “Here I am” that I echoed in my heart. It was also his disbelief: “Who am I that I should go?” Or, as was more accurate to my line of thinking at the time: who am I that I am worth loving? The fullness of the gospel had saved me, but I only seemed to remember half of it. I knew I needed to be forgiven, but I couldn’t believe I was. I knew God’s love was deep, but I thought my sin was deeper. I knew Christ accepted me, but I didn’t imagine He’d accepted all of me. I was a work in process, and I assumed the work was mine to complete. I was a well-intentioned mess, and I thought the mess was mine to clean up. But guess what? That wasn’t Truth. God never said I have to clean myself up before I come to Him, to get it right before I trust in Him. He never said I could not or would not be a work in process. Search for these commands in the Bible, and you will come up short. In fact, God says the opposite. The Bible is full of in-process people, those whom Christ pursued and loved exactly as they were, well-intentioned messes like me. Like you. If we need permission to be in process, we can look to Scripture.
I am the woman at the well, taken aback that this man would dare to be seen with me.
I am Zaccheus, standing at a distance and hoping to catch a glimpse of the Messiah.
I am Peter, promising I would never deny Him and then turning around to do exactly that.
I am Peter, weeping when I meet Jesus’ eyes and realize that I have failed and failed big, again.
I am Martha, running around trying to guarantee my worth and everyone else’s happiness.
I am Mary, collapsing at His feet because I am so desperate for His presence.
I am the adulterous woman, standing guilty for all the world to see.
I am the bleeding woman, utterly incapable of healing what ails me.
I am a mess, in process, just like all of them. Looking through its pages, I see pieces of me all through God’s Book."
Wow. It was as if she was talking about me and not herself. Is there any sin that grips me tighter than the belief that though it was once grace, now it has to be me? It is something that I struggle with constantly. Geez, it was the reason that I even read that short devotional this morning; I had been reading the covenant for City Project yesterday, and one of the statements was that I would commit to spending daily time with the Lord, which is not something that I have been making time for recently, and thought, "oh, I need to work really hard to get back to where I need to be for this trip". Is there anything that is less like the gospel than thinking "how hard i need to work to get there"? THAT IS THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT THE GOSPEL IS. The gospel is grace, not just once, not just to save your soul eternally, but grace again and again and again and again and I can't even write enough agains to explain it. I need constant reminders in my life that IT WILL ALWAYS BE GRACE. My soul saving did not make me personally strong enough to shake off any sin that entangles me, it instead, connected me to the Source that provides grace EVERY SINGLE TIME. It is so like me to think that I have to clean myself up to approach the throne and ask for grace, how ridiculous is that? Of course I can't clean myself up, that is why I have to run to grace in the first place. It has always been grace, it will alway be grace, it will never not be grace. I do not have to clean myself up to go on City Project, to approach the Lord, or to ask for grace. Grace is given freely, to those who are drowning deep in their sin. I do not have to clean myself up to get grace, grace does the cleaning because I am incapable.
If you want this a little louder, then listen to Judah Smith say it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwX_EpNR4CA
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