Today's thought started out with James 3:8, "but no man can tame the tongue, ti's a restless evil, full of deadly poison." and the footnote mentions the thought that so many people have is "well if i can't control it, why even try."
ft.nt. "Even if we may not achieve perfect control of our tongues, we can still learn enough control to reduce the damage our words can do. It is better to fight a fire than to go around setting new ones!"
That thought made me start to wonder, or more more or less God started talking about this subject. How many times do we not attempt something or not put our effort into something because we know it won't be perfect. I've even talked to some people who said they'll never be perfect, they'll keep on sinning so why ask for forgiveness or why be saved.
But I think this ft.nt. kind of hit it on the head by saying we fight fires instead of spread them. I think so many times we believe being neutral on a subject or non-action on a subject is an option. Really, though, the more I've found out is if your not with something, your partly against it. I'm not talking just about being saved, (your either for or against God, there is no fence, the devil owns the fence.) But in a lot of other situations. For example: Say someone is speaking at cru and they start listening to lies about they're not saying the right thing, no ones listening, what are they doing, they're messing it up, and they start to feel overwhelmed and ka-thumped. Someone in the audience may think that they should tell the speaker afterwards that they really liked it and needed to hear it. Instead, they remain "neutral" and take the course of "no action" because they don't think it's important or they won't get it out right. Really, they are fighting with the voices of lies by not saying anything rather than battling them with them and saying, "thank you." - That kind of gets into another field. Another, maybe better example: when taking a vote, if you take the course of "no-action" then you are voting against something whether or not you want to. It's like in life they say everyone for it, move over here, if you're against it, stay where you are. By not being part of the solution, you're part of the problem.
But moving back to perfectionism. Think of the things we don't due because we think they won't be perfect. Talking to someone, art projects, dancing, singing, playing a sport, speaking in front of a group, etc. But each of these things we may not see as perfect, but maybe it's because our perfect is due to a limited view. Ex 1.- talking to someone, we may not due it because we think it'll come out wrong or have no idea what to say, maybe we're not suppose to say anything. Maybe we just need to listen. Maybe your lack of knowledge or wisdom will continue the conversation. I talked with one guy named Chris once who started talking to me about God stuff and my mind blanked. I knew exactly what he was talking about and how to answer it but the words wouldn't come. Everyonce in a while I could get a thought out of, well I kind of see it like _____. Later, I realized because of my lack of all the right words, he didn't think i was some soapbox christian and that i knew everything (which i definitely dont) but that I was willing to listen to what he had to say and have a conversation and that not every Christian has to know it all.
One of the biggest things I believe people struggle with is confidence, we search for it in nearly everything (sports, dating, school, cars, job), but forget to look to the guy who has an abundance of it, wanting to give it to us. But people's lack of confidence often lead to the idea that those Christians seem confident, they must know everything and be perfect at everything. I have a shirt that says "Not perfect, just forgiven." But maybe in our attempts (yes, attempts meaning failures or not perfections), we can show others that we are far from perfect, but forgiven. That's another reason why we should try.
Another reason is the fact thats it's not necessarily what place we get, but how we run the race. We are surrounded by people desperately watching us to find out what's different about Christians. We should be showing them that it's not really what the end result is, it's about our heart through the process. That God never ever calls us to be perfect (I don't know why we think we should be then), but he only calls us to be faithful. He doesn't say get first place, he says go out there and give me what you've got and I'll take care of the rest.
If we only do what we know we can be perfect at then we miss out on a lot of opportunities. A time to grow, a time for someone else to learn to teach, a time to show someone how much you really Love them. To show Love - have you ever had someone who really couldn't sing and knew they couldn't sing and was almost embarrassed of their singing, sing you a song to show you that they Love you. I mean we do it with people here on earth, I think the idea kind of fits the Big Guy too. We're not perfect, pretty sure he know that, but just the effort we put forth shows our love to Him. It's like the little kid who makes the macaroni picture or colors a picture, it's way outside the lines and not really a picture, but the parent just loves it because it shows the time they put into it. All of our efforts are macaroni compared to God's sculpture of the valleys and mountains, but it's not what they come out as. It's about us giving what we have to show Love. Like someone making a friend a scarf and it's tight in some places and loose in others but they spent hours on it, and the friend loves it and wears it everywhere because they love it.
But maybe our vision of perfection is because we can't see it all. Because a conversation didn't go where we wanted it to doesn't mean it didn't go where it needed to. So many inventions have came out of failed attempts of something else. Because a movie didn't have the punch we wanted to doesn't mean it didn't get the pointed that needed to be there across. Because you didn't deliver the speech with the most of eloquence and cried in the middle didn't mean you didn't connect with hearts and let God change them through you. I can think of hundreds of what we see as failures or non-perfect things and then later see them as, "oh, so that's what God was doing there." It seems like focusing on perfection rather than the heart behind it puts an awful lot of pressure on us. We focus alot on what we are and what we're doing and how it will come out rather than just focusing on God and who he is. I want to say even be cautious of focusing on what he's doing because often times we have a habit of trying to race God. "ok you're doing this, let me help it along the way. Come on God, why are you still back there?" Instead of sticking with and following God, we try to lead and set the pace. I think it's some sort of human instinct to want and need control. We're always searching for what God's doing and I think sometimes our mind and that instinct takes over and we want to help God in what he's doing and we end up doing a lot of things that wasn't in God's plan or timing to start with.
The main point seems to be it doesn't matter if it's perfect, because if we do it, it probably won't be, but thats no reason to not attempt it because our perfect isn't always his perfect. What we do we should just do with our whole hearts, our honest and sincere hearts.
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