What's wrong with trying to be the best I can be?

Here's our new Precious Prodigal post for July 22, 2014: What's wrong with trying to be the best I can be? Please "Share" using this "ShortLink" = http://bit.ly/1rIDoBj

1 John 1:8 "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us."

The speaker was talking about the “Five P’s” we need to avoid if we want to have serenity and peace, and I was studiously taking notes. I had four of them but had somehow missed the fifth, and it was driving me crazy.

I wracked my brain for several minutes, totally missing what the speaker was saying, and finally asked the friend sitting next to me what I had missed. She glanced at my list, raised one eyebrow and, with an ironic smile replied, “Perfectionism.” Ouch.

Those of us who love a prodigal often become super-responsible. How can we not? Someone has to make sure the bills are paid, the kids are fed, and the house is clean. Who’s going to explain to the boss why the prodigal’s not at work or in school if we don’t? It certainly isn’t going to be my prodigal, who doesn’t care diddley squat about doing the right thing.

I totally get it that the prodigal isn’t behaving responsibly, and that might mean we have to do more than the average person. I even agree that the prodigal may often or even almost always be wrong. However, it doesn’t automatically follow that you and I are always right.

What’s wrong with wanting to do the right thing and to do it right? Perhaps nothing. It certainly isn’t a problem that we try to do our best. However, it can become an issue if we’re so determined to do everything “right” that we begin to believe “our” way is the right way and is, in fact, the only right way.

If we’re not careful, we will become so focused on the sin and outrageous behavior of our prodigal that we won’t be able to see our own. And believe me when I tell you it’s there. The fact that the prodigal and others sin differently from us doesn’t mean we are without sin. In fact, the Scriptures say we are deceiving ourselves if we say we have no sin. (1 John 1:8) And the prophet Isaiah compares us to “sheep that have gone astray, every one of us turning to his own way.” (Isaiah 53:6)

So the bad news for those of us who are a little (or a lot) obsessive about doing things “right” is that we aren’t ever going to achieve perfection. I wonder sometimes if God doesn’t shake His head as He looks at us straining and trying for a perfection we can never achieve.

The good news is that we don’t have to. If you have never accepted Christ as the payment for your sin, maybe it’s time to do it now. That same passage in Isaiah says that God “laid on him [Christ] the iniquity of us all.” (Isa 53:6)

For me, asking Christ to be my Savior and to forgive my sins wasn’t entirely about wanting a home in Heaven. It was about the fact that I was broken inside, and I needed Jesus to forgive my sins and fix that brokenness by changing my heart and my life.

We still won’t be perfect once we receive Christ, nor do we have to be. We have a heavenly Father, who “pities us like a father pities his children…he knows our frame and remembers that we are dust.” (Psalm 103:13-14)

Don’t you think the God who formed you in the womb and has watched over you for your entire life…that God…don’t you think He knows what you have had to endure and what you have survived to get you to where you are today? That’s a God who loves you, who has compassion on you, who will patiently mold you. And that perfection you’re desperate to achieve? You can lay it aside.

Challenge for Today: Can you, just for today, lay aside that perfectionism and rely instead on the finished work of Christ?

***If you have made a decision to ask Christ to forgive your sins and to be your personal Savior, would you let me know so I can rejoice with you? You can email me at [email protected]