"I wasn't Jesus Today"

This evening I was sitting in C's room with her, sorting books before bedtime. She picked up a book about Jesus' birth, looked at it for minute and said to me, "I wasn't Jesus today, Mommy."

I looked at her and said, "What do you mean, Sis? " She said, "I wasn't like Jesus today. I fought with A and I didn't listen." She genuinely looked distraught about the fact that she had done these things. (Secretly inside my head I was doing flips, thinking to myself, "Yea! It is sinking in what J and I are teaching her! Lately it's all been about when she can watch Yo Gabba Gabba and having Easter Candy from the Easter Bunny...:)

So I grabbed her and put her on my lap and said, "Sis, nobody is perfect. Nobody is Jesus. We all make mistakes, even me (GASP!), and Daddy, and everybody on Earth. Jesus is the only perfect one. But guess what? He loves us no matter what... even when we do the wrong thing. So let's pray and thank Him for loving us and forgiving us for not being like Him."

Perfection....... are we striving for it? Are we relying on ourselves for it? Or are we relying on Jesus to make us perfect? Good questions..... this conversation with my four-year-old daughter got me thinking about my relationship with Christ and my own striving for perfection. Now, I have to admit that I am a perfectionist in some ways... okay, a lot of ways. I am sure some of can you can relate. I have my lists and plans and ways of doing things. I cannot look at a handout at a meeting without proofreading it. The chairs at my kitchen table all have to be pushed in before I leave the room. I frequently take piles of papers down to J's office AKA the pit of despair.... I do have to say that living with J for almost 13 years has relaxed some of those perfectionistic tendencies... This perfectionism,however, is not the kind that God wants me to have.

He wants me to be made perfect through my relationship with Jesus. God demands perfection, and the only way we can achieve it is through Christ. First we have to accept that we are sinners and cannot achieve perfection without Him. 1 John 1:8 says, "If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us." We are humans, we are fallen, we go back to sin again and again. We cannot follow all of God's laws. It's impossible! But God solved this problem for us be sending Jesus to die for our sins. Romans 5:8 says, "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." It still amazes me ..... how much He loves me. How much he suffered so that I could have a relationship with Him.

Instead of trying to be perfect through my own means, I need to live my life for Him, learn from my mistakes, listen to what God is trying to teach me through these experiences, and be made perfect through Him, by Him......His perfect plan, perfect will, perfect faithfulness, perfect power and of course, His perfect love.

I wasn't Jesus today, either. But we had a good talk about it, He and I.:)

Originally posted by Kristi on April 19