I have had conversations with people, including family members, who have trusted Jesus as their Lord and Savior, and they have this vague feeling that they are too sinful, that they are not good enough to come to Christ. We discuss that all are sinners, that none are good enough, walking through verses like Romans 3:10 and 3:23. I have walked away when the conversations needed, troubled with this attitude because it is keeping them from coming into the joy that awaits them through a step of faith and trust.
I want to ask them as a parting comment, "And Just Who Do You Think You Are?", because it is pride getting in the way once again. There is no humility here ("I am not good enough'), there is pride ("I am so bad I have stretched myself beyond the reach of God"). There is also a good measure of ignorance, a lack of understanding of the true nature, the infinite presence of God.
I know, I was there until just a few years ago myself. I can still hears the echoes of the crunching under the Lord's feet of my brittle shell of pride, as He broke it and broke me, to Him. I know whence pride cometh, and that it goes before a fall.
Do not let your pride stand in the way of the joy He has for you. You know you are not good enough. He knows you are not good enough (and He knew it long before you did). Get over it.
Pride will come before a fall. Make it a fall into His arms for eternity, not a fall from grace forever.
I want to ask them as a parting comment, "And Just Who Do You Think You Are?", because it is pride getting in the way once again. There is no humility here ("I am not good enough'), there is pride ("I am so bad I have stretched myself beyond the reach of God"). There is also a good measure of ignorance, a lack of understanding of the true nature, the infinite presence of God.
I know, I was there until just a few years ago myself. I can still hears the echoes of the crunching under the Lord's feet of my brittle shell of pride, as He broke it and broke me, to Him. I know whence pride cometh, and that it goes before a fall.
Do not let your pride stand in the way of the joy He has for you. You know you are not good enough. He knows you are not good enough (and He knew it long before you did). Get over it.
Pride will come before a fall. Make it a fall into His arms for eternity, not a fall from grace forever.
2 comments:
Good post, Andy. None of us are "good enough" to come to Christ. That's exactly why he came to us. I know that excuse well and used it myself when it suited me. I find in retrospect that it wasn't so much that I thought I was too bad. It was more that I wanted to stay that way, because the idea of having to be good didn't really appeal to me one bit. I rather liked being what I was - if only it could come without consequences, which of course it seldom did.
What ultimately had to happen was for Christ to grant repentance - which comes with a view of His holiness and of the repulsiveness of one's own sin. Once a soul gets a glimpse of those things it will run to Christ with desperation to partake of His beautiful holiness and be delivered from the filth of one's sin.
Before I found the struggle to be looking for what was lasting in my sin that made me feel good.
Now the struggle is with facing what is lasting in my sin that makes me feel bad.
That, and trying to good for goodness sake (pardon the Christmas pun) for that is what Jesus would have me do.
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