Content In Your Relationship With Jesus

I really liked your post, StoneRose, about choosing to be happy. I wanted to continue in that thought because it is near and dear to me.

For a very long time in my walk with Christ, I would criticize and chastise myself every time I made the smallest mistake. One thing, no matter how large or small, would stay on my mind for days, and I would wallow in alternating bouts of self-pity and then guilt for feeling that way. I felt that I was supposed to examine myself continually, and I was always disappointed with what I saw. So I would strive harder to be perfect.

It took me a long time to realize the truth of 1 John 3: 18-24. I love the way The Message puts it:

“My dear children, let’s not just talk about love; let’s practice real love. This is the only way we’ll know we’re living truly, living in God’s reality. It’s also the way to shut down debilitating self-criticism, even when there is something to it. For God is greater than our worried hearts and knows more about us than we do ourselves.

And friends, once that’s taken care of and we’re no longer accusing or condemning ourselves, we’re bold and free before God! We’re able to stretch our hands out and receive what we asked for because we’re doing what he said, doing what pleases him. Again, this is God’s command: to believe in his personally named Son, Jesus Christ. He told us to love each other, in line with the original command. As we keep his commands, we live deeply and surely in him, and he lives in us. And this is how we experience his deep and abiding presence in us: by the Spirit he gave us.”

I was so worried about not making any mistakes, that I was missing the opportunities all around me to express His love. I like to say that when I am looking at myself, my eyes are not on Jesus. In reading 2 Corinthians 3:18 it seems to me that true change and growth into the image of our Lord, comes from beholding Him, not by trying harder and harder to please.

I feel like one of the biggest turning points of my life in Christ was when I finally understood what it means to relax and behold Him. I stopped looking at my failures and started looking at Him. When I did this, He started to show me, patiently and kindly, the areas that He wanted to change in me. But there was no condemnation, no self-criticism. I had the liberty to simply relax and say, “Yes, I want you to change me.” Of course, it hasn’t always been easy. Most of the time it’s not easy to give over what He wants in my life, but I think I learned the crucial lesson of how to make mistakes.

Inside of His grace, I have the freedom to risk and sometimes fail, and know that He still loves me no matter what. Of course, it breaks my heart whenever I feel that I have disappointed Him, and I don’t believe that I should sin so that grace will abound! But every time I fall, I hear Him say, “I have already forgiven you. Do not be afraid of failure. I will never change my mind about you and you will always be My child.” It makes me feel so safe and often it is in my failures that I learn the most about the character of Christ.