If you are like me, at some point in your life you have separated good things and bad things into two very distinct categories.
A list of the permissible and the forbidden.
The accepted and the unacceptable.
The right things and the wrong things.
The things you do and the things you do not do.
I would always do this with food. I would resolve to eat healthier and live a better lifestyle, which always translated into me making a list of good foods that I could eat and bad foods that I had to avoid like the plague.
Guess what always happened?
I craved the list of bad foods and I loathed the list of good foods.
This was a vicious cycle for years until a nutritionist told me to rip up my lists and ideas of good foods and bad foods.
WHAT?!?!
I could not wrap my head around that concept….especially the fact that this advice was coming form
a trained professional.
She told me you are never going to get permanent results with that system, because it is not realistic.
It is not realistic to never eat chocolate again and it is definitely not realistic to eat fruits and vegetables for the rest of your life, especially because I don't even like fruits and vegetables.
By making those lists I created guilt for the bad things and I created obligation and resentment for the good things.
This will always lead to burnout and failure.
This made me think of all of the other lists that I create.
My Jesus lists in particular.
I have created a very strict list of "Dos and Do Nots" for my life.
They were made with good intentions, but along the way they became very distorted.
Guess what?
The above advice is true for these lists as well.
It is not realistic for me to never mess up again and it is definitely not realistic for me to do the right thing for the rest of my life.
By creating these lists for my self I have created guilt for the bad things and obligation and resentment for the good things.
I created a life where doing something off the bad list leaves me in a world of guilt and feeling like a terrible person, and the list of good things…well those have just become obligations that I resent and no longer look forward to or enjoy.
The thing is that these lists leave out major explanatory details.
The lists of bad things are just bad, because they are bad and we aren't sure why, but everyone around us thinks they are bad so we don't do them.
Now I have this lists of things that I try so hard not to do and I don't even really know why I don't do them…I just don't.
And I have this other lists of things I feel like I should do, because thats what you are supposed to do, but I have not an ounce of desire to do them because they have become tasks and obligations.
This is not fun and not at all the way I think that God designed it.
The lists leave out the best parts.
The lists forget to tell you,maybe they did once but along the way have been forgotten, why you choose not to do certain things.
They forget to remind you of why God asked you not to do those things and the bigger reasons behind not doing them.
The reasons that are more than just not doing them to be a good Christian.
The lists forget to remind us that the things on the good list are actually good things that are designed for so much more then a check list.
They are things that God knows we need and things he uses so that we can become closer to him.
So for me…I'm done with my strict lists.
I want to stop looking at things that I do not do as bad things and start looking at them and reminding myself of the reasons that I don't do them.
Reasons like knowing God has my best interest insight and I know he has something better in mind.
I want to stop looking at the good things as things I have to do and start looking at them as things I get to do.
Things that allow me to know more about Jesus, become closer to him and love others better because of it.
I am not sure if any of this makes sense to anyone but me, but this was a huge breakthrough for me and has brought so much freedom into my life.
Freedom in the sense that I have let go of the idea, that I for so long lived under that loving Jesus was doing the right things and not doing the wrong things.
My worth and His Love for me are no longer dependent on how well I follow those lists.
It is so nice to do things out of a genuine love for Jesus then out of a desire to be a good Christian.
It is amazing how much more enjoyable my journey through life has been with the acceptance that I am going to make mistakes and i am not always going to have it all together.
The best part is that Jesus is going to love me the same through each stage of the journey.
ps. I would encourage you to read the book of Romans. I am loving it!
