No More Pedestal!

     Somewhere in my childhood, I decided I had to be perfect in order to be loved, especially by my parents. So, I crawled up on a pedestal and began my balancing act. Fear soon developed in me a panic driven desire to never fall off! It had me convinced that I would not be loved if I did. I have to admit, I had living life on a pedestal down pretty good. At least what people saw! At times living on that pedestal wasn’t so bad, it definitely had its rewards. Some referred to me as the ‘poor little rich girl’. I never felt rich but as an only child of parents who experienced success in their careers, I did get things: new clothes, new car, a trip to Europe, etc. However, each time I received anything, my parents, trying to encourage me would say, “You are only getting this because you are so good!” Though they did not mean for that to come across as negative, it did feed the voice of fear which would scream at me, “What would your life be like if you messed up and people didn’t think you were ‘good’?" I could not trust the fact that I would still be loved. This fear caused me to make some stupid decisions, that to this day, I regret. It made me insecure with people: whether they really loved me or they loved what they saw. It made me internally mad at my parents for not loving me unconditionally. (I now feel like I misjudged them. I believe they would have loved me no matter what, but my fear kept me from ever testing that love.) That fear made its way into my marriage as well. For many years I did not trust Dwayne's love for me when he would point out an area in my life that needed improvement. Also, this fear was present in my relationship with God. It made me doubt His unconditional love for me and I wondered, "Could I trust Him to still love me even if I sinned against Him?"
Every day, I see people struggle with thinking that God is going to turn His head from them because they have sinned. They feel He will no longer love them, or should love them, because they have screwed up! It would be great if sin would leave our lives as soon as we become a follower of Jesus Christ, but it doesn’t work that way. God does not remove our flesh and Satan still roams this earth seeking ways to devour God’s children. Sin is going to be a part of our life! We can strive to conquer it and we can make great strides but we will never be 100% sinless; that is why we need Jesus, He is the only one who is perfect and who is sinless. We must remember that all of our sins were covered on the cross. We sometimes want to make a distinction between past sin, present sin, and future sin. When Jesus died for us He paid the price for all our sin, and when he was on the cross, all of our sins were in the future!  So, don't make a distinction where God does not!  His love and forgiveness is not based on who you are, it is based on who He is!
     Just because we have sinned, does not mean we cannot be used by God! God uses broke people, as long as they have sought His forgiveness and have surrendered their will to His will. If we look across the scriptures we see many people who had sin in their life, and each of them God loved, God forgave, and God used: Moses, David, Noah, Adam, Eve, Rahab, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Peter, Paul, Mary Magdalene, the woman at the well, etc.
     I had to come to the point of understanding that I CAN live life off the pedestal. The pedestal is a hard place to live and a place of fear. I had to accept the fact that I am not perfect and I really don’t want to try to be anymore! Now, that does not mean I do not strive to be obedient to Christ, I just accept the fact that my righteousness comes from who He is, not who I am! I have learn to trust that others will love me even with my flaws and if they don’t, that is their issue. I have to constantly be aware of my natural tendency to crawl back up onto my pedestal. Why my flesh keeps trying to get me back on it when it only causes hurt is beyond my understanding! I think the way I fight my flesh from getting me back on my perch is by being an ‘open book’ and learning to laugh at my many blunders!
     Do you have a fear of failure? Do you think you have to be perfect to be loved? Do you think that God turns His back on you when you sin? Do you trust His forgiveness? Can you truly trust His unconditional love for you? What is your heart telling you? What are your actions showing you?

Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant—dog dung. I’ve dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ and be embraced by him. I didn’t want some petty, inferior brand of righteousness that comes from keeping a list of rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from trusting Christ—God’s righteousness.

Philippians 3:8-9