The Perfect Christian

Perfect ends up being the enemy of good.

This is so true. For me ever since I’ve gotten saved, I’ve been striving to be that perfect Christian girl. My intentions are good. I mean we all should try to be the best Christian we can be. The longer I have been a Christian the more I have learned. And I’ve found that there are a lot of things “good Christians” do. Give to the needed, love everyone, go to church, pause every day, don’t talk back to your parents, don’t judge anybody, and trust God even when you don’t believe in yourself. This is just some, but this list was my model of what I believed a perfect Christian should be doing. So that’s what I strived to do – follow everything on this list, and be PERFECT.

Ha. Yeah as you can tell, if you know me, I haven’t even came close to living up to this list perfectly. Sure sometimes I’ve done well and kept to this list, but when I didn’t, I thought I was a bad person, a bad Christian, I thought that God didn’t love me as much when I didn’t keep them. So this ideal we all have of the perfect Christian started getting to me.

I don’t know if any of you have felt that way to – having to be your best for God. I mean we all should try to be our best. But what I found is that I was almost limiting my view of God. See I had set this perfect model in my head so high, that when I found myself not keeping these standards I’d get discouraged.

“For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” Romans 3:23

We all sin. Yes, everyone will sin even when we mean to do well. My ideal, this list, see that’s what perfect Christians do, and I’m not perfect to say the least, only one man to live was perfect and that’s Jesus Christ. See this perfect man, lived a perfect life, so that imperfect people can go to a perfect place. Yeah, imperfect people, me. Jesus doesn’t expect us to live up to this ideal we have! We don’t have to! He wants us to do our best but don’t get the idea in your head that you have to be perfect because hun that’s impossible.

Perfect ends up being the enemy of good.

So in a sense our image of being a perfect Christian does end up being the enemy of good. I started getting so discouraged that I wasn’t living up to what God wants of me that I stopped trying, stopped praying, stopped pausing. See I felt as though I wasn’t living up to His expectations so why even try anymore? So wanting to do well, to be better, actually caused me to do worse! As Christians we need to stop striving toward perfection and start going day by day and seeing God for Himself. We need to stop focusing on what we are doing wrong and start focusing on Him. Because He already forgave everything you’re going to do wrong!

Don’t get caught up in perfect, get caught up in Him and He’ll make you perfect.

But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Matthew 6:33

Comfort Zones

Saturday will be the first time I get to share my testimony to others, well in person anyways. I know I’ve shared parts of my story through my blog. I’m double nervous about this “sermon” (if you can call it that) because for one my old youth pastor is going to be there, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know I went through half this stuff, and secondly it’s going to be the first time I speak without having a manuscript with everything I have planned to say (I do have an outline though).

I mean it should be easy, just talking about me, yet I find myself in this craze that I need to have everything planned out. I know my story. So why should write every word out? I shouldn’t. My feelings I feel are coming from my own desires of being comfortable.

We all have those comfort limits. For me it’s know exactly what I’m going to say before I get up there so I don’t mess up… so I don’t mess up. This got me thinking, why does it matter if I mess up? I mean God won’t look down on me for messing up, and neither will my audience. I think it’s because I’m making it matter if I mess up. I want to do my best for God, but through speaking to Him he is telling me I don’t have to be perfect because He loves me the same anyway.

Is there something in your life that makes you really uncomfortable so you don’t do it? If there is I pray that you take the courage to step out and try it. It’s hard for us to grow in Jesus when we don’t even try to step out of our zone. How do you expect to grow if you are constantly in the same position and not being pushed?

Now there are limits to this, I’m not saying go 30 days without eating cause that’s out of your comfort zone, but I am saying, if you feel God leading you to maybe talk to someone about Him, or go and make friends with the new person at school, do it. When we trust God with things that make us uncomfortable He’ll reward us. And believe me it makes you feel so much better once you do step out.

What I found is that making the decision to do hard things for God is actually harder than actually doing the thing itself! Accepting my pastors offer to do my first sermon was so much harder than actually doing it. See before I accepted, even after, I had all these reasons why I should do it, I’m too young, I can’t talk in front of people. But then I realized, yeah I can’t speak in front of people but God can. And once you realize that I promise you that you can do anything!

“I can do all things THROUGH Christ who gives me strength” Philippians 4:13

“So do not fear for I am with you. Do not be dismayed for I am your God. I will strengthen you. I will help you and uphold you in my righteous right hand” Isaiah 41:10

My Easter Sermon

This was my sermon that I did on Easter Sunday! Ahhhh, what an awesome experience that was. I am so humbled that God would want me, a 15 year old girl who has only known Him for a year and is terrified of speaking in front of people, to give the message on Easter! There was over 80 people at the sunrise service, which was the largest my church has had in a long time, how awesome! I love my God and love preaching about Him. If you didn't already know this was my third sermon I've done at churches. It's so much fun. And this weekend I am speaking again at 30 hour famine! If you could pray that God speaks through me and opens the hearts of those I'm speaking to! Thanks(: