Kenya. Dark, warm faces. White smiles. Stretching farmland with cows, goats, donkeys, and chickens. Lively, colorful worship. Children. Everywhere. Rain on tin roofs. Warm, sweet milky tea. And generally, a lot of carbohydrates.
This month has been such a blessing to my life. And once again, although our days were full of ministering to others, hoping our words and prayers would permeate the hearts of Kenyans; Jesus has been ministering to mine.
As I shared in my last blog, we did a lot of speaking. In homes, at schools, and in churches. Last Saturday, my team spent the morning teaching for three hours at a leadership seminar, and in the afternoon we visited Butere Girl’s High School- the boarding school that our pastor’s daughter attends.
When we arrived, we really didn’t know what we would be doing there. However, once Pastor John spoke with the principal, he notified us girls that we would be speaking in the chapel to no less than 1,200 girls. And we had about twenty minutes to prepare. For forty-five minutes we all shared testimonies and lessons learned from our experiences in middle school-college, and it ended up going very well.
Thinking back on this month, I’ve had a realization. Perfectionism wasn’t something that I had bravely chosen to break away from, beginning with my latest blog. Jesus has been stirring and twisting and pulling me into this new freedom all along.
Our decisions for who was going to give sermons occurred the night before and oftentimes- like at the high school- our speaking was impromptu. I couldn’t perfect the things I was going to say. There wasn’t time to cut and paste or backspace and retype. In fact- I used good, old-fashion paper and pen to write my sermons. And while the anxiety was still there, and sometimes I sat in the church crossing out words and drawing arrows and writing in the margins, the sermon I carried to the pulpit was far from perfect. I had to trust in the Lord that he would fill in the gaps. That he would speak through me. That even if it wasn’t perfect, it would be enough.
Perfectionism comes in many forms. But it’s always trying to prove something. Its goal is to weed out every flaw within. And sometimes it’s a good thing. It can drive someone to produce the best they possibly can. But it can also prevent someone from fully living. Because if we aren’t satisfied. If we can’t remove every flaw. We often give up. Or we stop trying. Because we’re afraid of failure. We’re afraid of not being good enough. And in these cases, perfectionism becomes a sin of insecurity.
What do I mean by that?
Jeremy Pierre, professor of biblical counseling at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, writes “Our cultural instructors disapprove of our insecurity because it is an offense to individual worthiness. God disapproves of our insecurity because it is an offense to his Son’s worthiness.” When we let perfectionism dictate our moves, when we only perform or publish or reveal to the world what we are secure in- we're not giving Christ the glory he deserves. We're not revealing his power in our lives.
The Lord says in 2 Corinthians 12:9, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Jesus tells us that it’s okay to mess up. In fact, he says that it is when we are weak- when we fail- that his power is made perfect.
In the world, as long as we do it in the right way, boasting in our strengths is what gets us places. Our resumes are filled with our talents, achievements, and references of people that will say good things about us. But imagine if our resumes were filled with our weaknesses; where we’ve messed up and fallen short. It listed our most embarrassing moments, traffic tickets, classes we’ve struggled in, people we’ve hurt… It wouldn’t make sense. The employer would think we were crazy.
But that’s how the kingdom of God works. The power of Christ is at work in our weaknesses. When we boast in our weaknesses, we’re declaring that we need Christ. We’re saying that we’re not perfect. We can’t make it on our own.
So perfectionists, when you're afraid of failure… don't give up. Trust that his grace is sufficient for you. And remember that it is in our weaknesses, our mistakes, our imperfections,that his glory is revealed instead of our own.
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