This past week we celebrated my wife’s birthday. You ever notice the older you get the more drawn out birthdays become. On Wednesday, we plan to have dinner with your side of the family, on Thursday we will have dinner with my side of the family, on Friday (which is your actual birthday), you and I are going out to do something special, and on Saturday your friends planned a surprise birthday party for you. So what was once a one day celebration now becomes Honokaa! You laugh but you know it’s true. And I don’t know about your family, but mine was the type that no matter what was going on, it always had to be big. You could not invite just one and not the other, you may offend someone. So no matter what we did there were always thirty to forty people at any given family event. I remember when we were younger, my uncle Joe would dress up like Santa and we would each take turns sitting on his lap as he embarrassed the crap out of us and gave us a gift. God forbid you brought a date to an event like this. You may have ended up single by the end of the night. Now that I am older and see my cousin’s kids anxiously waiting for Santa to come, some of them really believe or did at one time that he is really Santa. It amazes me how kids can come to the conclusion so quick that “because something appears to be real, then it must be true”. I feel there is a lot of truth behind this statement.
How many of us have gone through something in life that has impacted us for the good or bad and in turn we have come to accept it as a part of who we are? I think we all can relate to that. When things are going good, or we get positive encouragement for what we have done, it boosts our self-esteem and makes us feel valued. But what about those times when we get caught up in something or those secrets that we have been trying to hide forever now somehow slip out and everyone around you knows. All of a sudden we feel unwanted, unloved, and undesired. If this is how I feel then this is how I am really perceived. How many of us can relate to that in some way? The truth is you never will be good enough and you know what, praise God for that. I know some of you right now are thinking I must be out of my mind but follow me here. From the time of the fall (when Adam and Eve decided to do there own thing and eat from the tree of life and knowledge), we are all fallen beings. We all fall short of the glory of God. We are filled with sin. There is no way around that. But (and here is the good part) through recognizing that we are fallen and that we will never be good enough, this frees us up to serve God out of obedience not obligation. Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”. Not some…all. That is why Christ died on the cross. It was His blood that paid for our sins. Satan on the other hand uses this against us. By him manipulating us into thinking we are not good enough, we then fall into the performance trap. If we can only do this then God will love me. If I read my bible, go to church, pray, this will make God love me more. And when we fail to do so, we feel unloved, unwanted, undesired. Why; because we choose to believe the lies of the deceiver. The truth is there is nothing you can do to make God love you more, and there is no amount of sin that could replace the grace and love of God. He loves you so much that He sent his son to be beaten, mutilated, and nailed to a cross just so you may know how much you are loved. When we begin to realize that God accepts us and loves us for who we are regardless of our sin and shortcomings, we can then begin to live from His approval, not for His approval. You are not your sin!
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