Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Addition by Subtraction

When I was a younger Christian, I thought that I’d eventually have it “all together.” I expected to become the “complete package,” strong in every important spiritual quality. But I have been greatly disappointed. Not only have I not achieved completeness in any spiritual quality, I have only come to learn I am so far from being complete that I’ll never get even close—that I’ll always be incomplete in just the ways that I had deemed it important to be complete.

But, amazingly, this has turned out to be good news. In my incompleteness, I have been forced to turn to God and found that in Christ, I am complete. In fact, I now suspect this was the point all along, not for me to become complete in and of myself, but rather to learn I needed Christ to make me perfect, and, hallelujah, that He had done so.

2 comments:

Ρωμανός ~ Romanós said...

Thank you for the simplicity and truthfulness of your words. Yes, it seems that we're never really right about anything, until we accept God's will for us as what's really right. I wanted to believe that with Christ I would live happily ever after. Now I see that what I once called happy is different from what I now call blessed, the "makários" of the Beatitudes. Where I once thought I'd only have to carry my cross for a little while here and there, now I know that when it's time to stop carrying it, is when I will be ready to be nailed to it. There is no escape. Now, at last, the good news is seen to really be good. Not my will, but Thine, O Lord, be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Michelle said...

AMEN.

Throughout our time in Buffalo Michelle and I have felt that it was our desert, and we wandered aimlessly for a time. It is only when we place our complete trust and hope in Him that we can feel His peace.

Travis