when reality hits.

I was driving home from school today, when I suddenly realized how forgiven I was--which was surprising b/c it's been a hard week thus far. It was a very sobering, thankful thing that swept over me. I've been really honest with God this week, maybe more so than I have ever been, allowing myself be real with God about my imperfections, allowing myself to go deep into the trenches of my humanity. Normally, I find myself running from my shame or my short-comings, or trying to cover them up or trying to compensate by doing things like throwing myself into a ministry, or spouting out "Christianese" to myself and/or to anyone who would hear. No, this time I had no energy left to be "strong." It was a scary and intimidating thing to allow myself to see who I really am before God--there was that lingering doubt in my head, telling me: Can God really accept you? Will He listen to someone so incredibly broken and imperfect?

I think that I am beginning to let go of control in regards to how much I have to do, to sort of earn God's unconditional love. I think part of this is because I am in this process of accepting who I am--a kind of acceptance that encompasses all my faults, my struggles and my imperfections. I mean, scripture says that God has accepted that part of me. If God, in Christ, accept those things about me, then who am I to reject the person He's made me to be? I've accepted that I am going to mess up. A lot. There's no point in pretending that I know what the hell I'm doing. In fact, I am still un-sanctified in so many areas of my life, but now, instead of me trying to "fix" all those bad things myself, I am striving to trust that the Spirit of God will work those things out in me. My job is to abide in Christ and to seek Him. The LORD will prune my imperfections, so that I may bear more fruit. It is the LORD's job...not mine.

After all, the Gospel is not about my ability to keep the rules, or how involved I am in ministry, but the willingness of Christ to forgive me...because no matter what I do, I will mess up in some way, shape or form. In Christ, I am fully accepted and fully forgiven.

...so the Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith--that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly that all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever.

Amen.