Warts and All

We all have ’em, why do we try to hide them from each other instead of sharing them and seeing their power taken away?

Let

Romans 6:12 has five words in the middle of it (four if you use a contraction) that read “do not let sin reign”. The little word “let” indicates that we have a say in the matter, which is really great news unless we believe it means we have the power over sin and all we need to do to conquer it is try harder. What we have the ability to “let” is to let God have our sin. It’s only in coming to Him and placing the things we struggle with in His hands that we are able to overcome for real. Sure we may be able to will power a temporary behavior change but true healing comes when we place our weaknesses with Him and trust enough to leave them there.

Undeserving

Many people keep God at a distance because they think they are unworthy or undeserving of Him. Come on, have you seen the rest of us? We’re all a mess! But we’re His mess and there is nothing He enjoys more than jumping into the chaos of our lives and helping us make sense of it all. At what point would we be “good enough”? No one knows us better than He does and there is nothing more amazing than seeing Him take our weaknesses and turn them into our greatest strengths. Our efforts to fix ourselves will always fall short if we leave Him out of the process.

I Got This

I got this is a pretty silly thing to say to the God of the universe. When someone far more qualified than ourselves offers to help, isn’t the smart thing to say, “absolutely”? Yet far too much of our life is kept from God. We each have weaknesses, flaws and wounds that we don’t trust Him to handle. We try to hide them from others, pretend they aren’t there and deal with them only when they become obvious. If we will trust Him, He’ll make our weakness strength, our flaws beautiful and use our wounds to help others heal.

I was afraid

“I was afraid because I was naked.” We needn’t fear God seeing our weaknesses. Our bad decisions and selfish actions never take Him by surprise. His love for us is always total and unconditional and His way is to use them to draw us closer. That’s why we call Him Redeemer; He takes our garbage and turns it into something beautiful.