Day 2983 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Psalm 37:24 NIV

Life is but a monotony of maniacal missteps taken with an often vigilant refusal to acknowledge them.

If we could only see the way God sees, I think we might realize just how silly we look in all of our endless efforts to prove ourselves worthy of His grace. All of these hours and days spent religiously repeating the same routines thinking that righteousness is found only in perfecting our approach to some list of rules and expectations we can oddly enough manage to come close to satisfying. It’s truly amazing the foolish efforts we give to coming up with a plan that flawlessly follows a path we can follow without error.

All because we think we can somehow please God by not needing Him.

That’s the ultimate danger in religion. It inspires us to lean upon ourselves and our ability to maintain our adherence to some random assortment of expectations held within a list of rules and regulations put in place by those who we assume to be better than us. It’s a mindset set on nothing but mere human example with a heart given only to following those who’ve followed that ideology better than we have or longer than we have or stricter than we have.

Speaking personally, I’ve come to expect perfection in myself. And I fear that a religion has founded because of it. No error. No day off. No room for laxity or levity. A routine, a rut, a religion built on what I can do, what I think I need to do, what I know I fail to do. And in that, as I sit here today, I realize that I’ve missed it. I’ve gotten distracted by reflections and replicas to the point that I can hardly reign in my mind for longer than an hour or so before I’m back to thinking about something that only serves to further this expectancy of perfection that I feel necessary to help define and exemplify my worth.

Sadly I think we still tend to think that we can please God by living a perfect life. But doesn’t it seem kind of silly to try to please Him by trying to not need Him? Just the very fact that Christ lived and died upon a cross, being completely innocent all the while shows that humanity cannot help itself. We cannot help ourselves. If we could somehow manage to be good enough then Jesus wouldn’t have had to die to atone for our mistakes.

So if we truly believe that Christ did die for us, then why so much time and effort put into trying to live as if He didn’t have to do so?

The fact is that God knows we’re going to mess up. Faith is merely the courage to look to Him when we do.

Yet there’s a truly scary truth that I fear we fail to see in regard to this faith we’re following. It’s a common misunderstanding caused by various misconceptions, all of which are actually manifestations of the same root problem. It’s a matter of our inherent self-vanity in which we assume ourselves to be far more capable than reality allows. It’s a mindset that has us perpetually convinced that we’re able to somehow figure this out with little to no external support or input or advice or help, or the humility that would allow us to lean upon them.

But the cold hard truth is that we cannot perfect this life spent following Christ. We cannot perfect faith. And we definitely can’t do so by seeking to spend our every moment trying to be something we simply can’t be, if for no other reason than we’ve already lived the pasts we’ve left behind filled with all of their many errors and transgressions. We cannot make up for what we’ve already failed to do, for what we’ve already failed to be.

All we can truly hope for is to grow away from those mistake-laden pasts and continue growing in the right direction, pruning away the fruitless branches that steal away time and energy which should be given unto the few aspirations that actually cause our faith to deepen and the relationship that it’s meant to be to grow.

But sadly I think we rarely give any time or thought to just how little focus we give to the simplicity of the relationship this is meant to be. Instead, we stay focused far more on the assumptions we have that a religion is enough. We pour ourselves into growing in the ways we personally feel we should grow, not really stopping to check with the One who really knows what we need. We just keep the hammer down in this race to be our idea of perfect.

But, how does one figure out a life they’ve not yet lived? How can we wrap our minds around a mindset that’s altogether alien from our normal considerations? How is that we can follow a path we can’t see toward a place we’ve never been behind a Savior who’s gone before us leaving us a truth we fight against and a Spirit that fights against our fighting against it? Truth is that it’s completely foolish of us to think we can somehow find a way to perfect a life of faith.

In fact, it’s foolish of us to think we can perfect anything when we’ve all lived plenty of years filled with more than enough evidence of only our perfect ability to live imperfectly.

Unfortunately, I think our minds as feeble and confused as they remain, still equate faith and religion. We approach this path as if a series of milestones reached only by the fulfilling of certain specific regulations set forth by those who’ve previously perfected this new way of living life. We buy all the books, listen to all the songs, invite all the input and hold to the assumption that there’s a particular way in which this must be done in order for it to be done well.

And there’s our problem, we can’t do this all that well. We’re humans. We’re fools. We’re prone to wandering after all that catches our eye and pleases our ear and appeases the desires we’ve not found need to agree are inconsistent with God’s holy commands. We remain caught in this middle ground of thinking that living a life of faith is something we can figure out and therefore accomplish well.

Because we want the glory. We want to be able to say, “Look what I did.” We want to be able to offer others evidence of our personal investment in this walk. We want to retain that opportunity to look in the mirror and say, “Well done, good and faithful human. You’ve done just fine. You’re doing plenty. You should be proud. Go grab yourself a cookie for being so great.”

We think righteousness is something we can figure out. If we pray long enough, hard enough, figure out just the right formula to squeeze in all the required elements then we’ve done it right. If we sing loudly enough and ensure plenty of hand and arm involvement it will seem a little more heartfelt. If we read a certain number of chapters in the Bible every day then we can get through the whole thing in a certain amount of time. If we manage to make it to three out of four services every month then we’re doing enough to grow.

If we don’t scream out curse words when someone cuts us off in traffic then we’re good stewards. If we give our middle fingers a break and turn down the metal so the windows don’t rattle then we’re doing no harm unto others. If we do everything we think we need to do, then we’ll have done plenty. If we avoid all the obvious pitfalls, then we won’t fall. If we don’t trip, we don’t stumble. If we do it all just right, then we are just fine.

Except, no. It doesn’t work like that. God isn’t appeased by our ability to perfect only that which we know we can perform well. He isn’t pleased by how fast we read the Bible. He doesn’t love those more who only wear suits and shiny shoes. He’s only pleased by hearts fully given unto Him, willing to cut away everything that turns our time and focus away from Him.

The point of faith isn’t figuring out what we can do to appease God, but realizing that we can’t. It’s not our agreeing to follow a list of rules, but to follow the Son who embodies God’s demand of righteousness. It’s not to turn in some report card showing how many days we showed up early to church and managed to not fall asleep half-way through. It’s showing up kneeling humbly before Him every single day bold enough to expect Him to show us what needs to be done to move closer to Him.

But sadly, so often we resort to this idea that our job as Christians is only to make certain we’re the perfect image of faith. We live as if we’re here to portray the best way to live a life of faith in a place that doesn’t make it easy. We approach every single day as if it were an audition for poster children who are so flawless that they have no need of salvation. And through it all, we put forth this image, and likely even start believing it ourselves, that we’re better than we really are.

God doesn’t need our pretending anymore. He doesn’t need a bunch of people who think themselves better than they really are, because you can’t help someone who won’t admit how much help they need. He can only save those who have the humility that affords them the ability to realize they need to be saved from a way of life that is in no way able to honor Him.

That is the only way we can do this. Only by the blood. Only with the Spirit. Only in truth. And folks, the truth is that we’re a bunch of baby deer out here tripping and stumbling and making a whole mess out of trying to learn to walk. Because we’ve not walked this way before. We’ve not done this. We’ve not considered all the things we now know to consider. We’ve not lived life without ourselves in the way. And when we take that selfish structure away, we fall apart. Because we don’t know how to let Him hold us together.

We’re used to doing it. We’re used to figuring it out as we go. We’re used to coming up with new rules that account for our inability to adhere to the previous ones. We’re used to a religion that changes to meet our needs. We’re in no way used to the idea of being a servant who puts everyone else first and refuses to settle for anything selfishly pleasing.

The point is that we can’t manage to not stumble. Again, human. We can’t not mess up. We can’t not accidentally say something we shouldn’t when in a moment of anger or frustration. We can’t be perfect, but perfect is all that God deserves. So we need help. We need guidance. And most of all, we need to understand that we need the rest of forever to learn how to do this. Because we simply can’t figure it out all by ourselves.

Which is why we need Jesus.

He alone atones for our failures and flaws. He alone makes up for our many missteps. He alone knows the way to do this, and so we can’t do it without Him. And we really need to stop thinking otherwise.

If we could have lived a perfect life having never said a harsh word, having never hated anyone, having never allowed anything to take God’s place or lead us away from Him, then maybe we could have done it by ourselves. But that’s gone. If we’ve ever made one mistake, then we’re unworthy of His mercy. Thankfully, it’s not the mistakes that define us. It’s what we do in spite of them.

We don’t need to figure out a way to be perfect, just to do better. Perfect is simply something we can never be so that needs to stop being our focus. We should focus instead on learning to ask for, and actually accept the help we so desperately need.

When we get to Heaven, it won’t be those who needed less of Jesus who are welcomed in. It will be those who needed Him so much that they actually poured every moment of their lives into leaning on Him that a relationship formed. It’s not about not needing help, but realizing that we need so much help that there’s only One who can ever be enough to make up for everything we can never be.

Look, if God were looking for perfect people, Heaven would be empty. Thankfully, Heaven is full. But not with those who didn’t need Jesus, just with those who realized they needed so much that a relationship with Him became the only focus they kept in life.

All the way to the home they knew they didn’t deserve to find.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold