Not Surprised

“God expects more failure from us than we do from ourselves because God knows who we are. We are not the righteous person who occasionally sins, we are the sinful person who occasionally–by God’s grace–gets it right. When we start from this perspective we are released from the bondage of perfectionism and are able to forgive ourselves once and for all.”

–James Bryan Smith

In other words, God isn’t surprised by our failures. He wants us to grow through them so that we learn from our mistakes, but they are not our identity any more than we identify our children by their mistakes. We are Christians in the making, half-baked and unfinished. God is in the finishing business. If we let Him, in His time and way He will “work in us to will and to do His good pleasure.”
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Comments by Rich DuBose. BetterSermons © 2009. All rights reserved. Use of this material is subject tousage guidelines | View main index