The Sacrifice of Perfection 
By Becky Rule

Recently I have been grappling with deeper levels of trust. God has shown me that I subtly continue to focus on my spiritual condition rather than on Jesus. Deep in my heart I do not consider Him able to adequately lead me and work all things together for good in my life, especially my mistakes. I fear having wrong beliefs. I fear being deceived and led astray because of my ignorance and an incomplete understanding of God and the things of God. I subtly believe that if I could know everything, I would believe the right things and be safe because I could then keep myself. We are CAUGHT. We simply do not have the wisdom and understanding to keep ourselves from living life without error, yet God requires us to be righteous. No matter how much we know and do, it is not enough. We can drive ourselves crazy trying to comprehend enough to stay on target, but it is a given that we are all “off” somewhere. How can a blind person see what he cannot see? We intellectually assent that God is more than capable of guiding us, but does the witness of our lives match our words? Do our hearts testify that we truly trust Him to guide us in spite of our mis-belief?

God is showing me that I still think my spiritual condition depends upon me. First I thought I had to do enough to please Him; now I think I have to know enough and believe the right things. What my unbelief is saying is that God’s grace is not sufficient to cover my incomplete understanding, my blindness and marred-ness. Part of the issue is image. I do not want to look bad and I want others to like me. On another level I want to have a good reputation and be a valuable witness. I desire to know the truth about God so I can share it with others. However, at that point I am defining truth as concepts and ideas and beliefs when the Truth is Jesus. I also end up valuing my witness and reputation over valuing God. Buried deep beneath the honorable-looking “I wants” is the fear that I could go to hell if I do not have the right beliefs about God. I fear that my beliefs must be 100% correct before I am acceptable and that I must have it all together before I can be of value to God or anyone else. It boils down to this: I have an unwillingness to be human, to be deficient in my sin-impacted condition, and to trust that God can and will be God.

As I have struggled with these issues and asked God many questions, He asked ME some questions: “What is your goal? You keep asking Me to keep you, but is that what you want? Do you want to be kept by Me, or to be perfect?” I immediately saw that I had defined “being kept by God” as being kept from anything that was not perfection. He challenged me to see that being kept by Him means experiencing my mistakes and clearly seeing my blindness, my deficiencies and faults…while seeing Jesus more clearly because of the contrast. Compare that with desiring perfection. Wanting to be perfect means I want to overcome my faults, remove all my blindness, rid myself of any deficiencies, to know all, see all and be all, which would result in seeing…me. At its ugliest, it is using Jesus to make me whole so that I no longer need Him. We SAY we want Jesus, but do we really mean it? Are we willing to pay the price of seeing our inadequacy and the depth of our sinfulness in order to see Him more clearly? WHY do we want Him? Do we want to be kept close or to be changed?

In order to have Jesus more visibly apparent in our lives, the goal of our own perfection must be sacrificed. In other words, we will lose our pride. As Paul encouraged us, “Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” Will I die to the notion of my perfection, capability, and adequacy? Will I trust God to be God and to lead me, allowing myself to be humbled by my humanness so that Jesus is exalted? “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God.” (John 6:68, 69) Father, You run the universe; may I trust You to get through to me, to work through my mistakes and errors, and to adequately lead me.