The depth of my relationship with Jesus reveals itself when my desire to be seen right in God’s eyes collides with the wrong that expresses itself in me. How I exchange my “wrong” for His “right” reveals the depth of my experience with Jesus.
I was talking with a friend recently about how the process of becoming like Jesus works. We are created to be in relationship with our Creator. Placed in the deepest part of who we are is a desire to be connected to the One in Whose image we are created. In my heart it is expressed as a deep desire to know that I’m in “right standing” with the One Who created me. I have a deep desire for my heavenly Father to look at me and call me “right”. The thought that I might not be seen as right in God’s eyes is paralyzing for me.
This paralyzing fear is often the catalyst for how I represent myself to people, and by extension, to my heavenly Father. The thought of being wrong is so demanding that I end up bending the truth to what I think a person’s idea of what is right would be. I’ll try and present myself such that you’ll believe that I have a handle on being “right”. This can be very confusing. Trying to figure out what you think is right and then telling my story to match that can be very taxing, but I’ve discovered that I do it without even thinking about it. I’m not trying to transfer my stuff onto everybody else, but I think we all might have a tendency to tell other people what we think they want to hear about ourselves.
It would be damaging enough if it ended there, but I do the same thing with my heavenly Father. I present to Him the parts of me that I think are okay so that He’ll see me as right. I’ll even rationalize the sin in my life in an attempt to not be wrong. I’m so afraid that if I’m not right, I’ll lose everything, so I offer God a lie. I then wonder why I can’t seem to get a handle on some sin in my life, so I’ll ask God to change me, or change my circumstances, or grow me, my desire to change coming from my fear of being wrong.
In this cycle of confusion I have learned one thing well. God can’t change a lie, He can only change the truth. What a fully devoted follower of Jesus does when confronted with their sin reveals the depth of their relationship and experience with Jesus. Jesus can’t change the lie I offer Him. I must, in truth, bring Him my sin. My sin is then exchanged for His righteousness. There is no other process I see in which one who is following after Jesus becomes holy. My life won’t change until I’m honest with where I am in my current state. When I offer Him my lie, He waits. When I’m honest about my sin, Jesus moves. The only way for me to be “right” is to exchange my “wrong” for Jesus’ “right”.
It seems that much of my energy is consumed with plowing through all of the confusing wrong that is a part of our daily existence. I am weary not only of dealing with my own sin, but also of dealing with a sinful world around me. So I cling tightly to the promise that someday Jesus is going to return and set things right. Our existence is going to be as He created it to be. A hope I carry in my relationship with Jesus is that one day God the Father will finally say, “That’s it. Time’s over. Jesus, go make things right”. It is then that “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” transforms from a forward looking prayer to an experienced reality.
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