What Good Christians Do.

Source

Good Christians go to Africa.

Or, at the very least, to the soup kitchen.

They go to the bad neighborhoods and evangelize the homeless.  They risk their life in countries closed to the Gospel.  They give everything in order to serve.

And if I understood anything at all about Christianity, it was that my choice to follow Jesus was first and foremost a call to die. 

I knew that the only way to make God happy was to find those verses in the Bible about feeding the hungry and caring for the orphans and widows and live them wholly to the detriment of all else.  I knew that the only way to be a good Christian was to do something drastic in the name of the Lord… and that then, and only then, would I be enough in His eyes.

I didn't go to Africa.  I wasn't good enough to do that, after all, without a degree in Missions or International Ministry.  I didn't even have a passport, but I had a willing heart.

Instead, I went to Texas.  I cared for orphans.  I put on my Christian smile and my Christian uniform and I said the right catch phrases to be one of those women who give everything up for the calling to love the least of these.

Except that I wasn't.

I was drowning in my own effort, I was grasping for God in a dark, hopeless place inside myself – farther from Him than I'd ever been.  And I didn't know what to make of it.

I knew how it was supposed to work.  Good Christians go into full-time ministry, then God rewards them with warm fuzzy feelings and a gold star in the Book of Life.  That's how the equation was supposed to go – I'd been told that my entire Christian life – but no matter how I figured the numbers, my math just wouldn't line up right.  I couldn't get the right answer. 

I've never been good at math, so I puzzled over the integers.  Gave up belongings.  Check.  Left my family.  Check.  Cared for orphans.  Double check…carry the one…

But the pit continued to grow and the algebra of giving and serving continued to puzzle and I wondered if maybe Texas wasn't far enough but was afraid of what I already knew.  I wasn't a good enough Christian.  I wasn't satisfied with all this selflessness because I was a rotten, weak, selfish girl who probably hated all things holy and was doing more harm than good there, and Jesus probably couldn't love a girl like me anyway.

So I left.

In the leaving, I laid down my good Christian.  I left her in Texas where she belonged because I had no use for her anymore.  I scooted across the country with a moving truck of things I wasn't leaving behind this time in the interest of running… just getting away from the incredible expectation of the kind of life I knew I could never lead.  And I sort of whispered "I'm sorry" to the idea of serving Jesus with my whole life because I'd obviously failed at that whole thing, and I might as well just get back to my regular old failing life where I wasn't dragging anyone down with me.

But a funny thing happened.

Jesus met me.  Right there when I stepped foot out of the moving truck.  Right in the middle of my mess and though I'd looked for him all along, I found Him only when I looked beyond the expectation of the holiest kind of me.  Only when I had failed and admitted that I wasn’t holy at all and had no good at all in me – when I finally knew, once and for all, that my ugly, messy love just paled in comparison to the love of a Father that never had to try.

"Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God."                                  -2 Corinthians 3:5

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Linking up to:  http://www.mommadaybyday.blogspot.com/

We're reading through Emily P. Freeman's Grace for the Good Girl (affiliate link).  This week is chapters 2-3.  Join us... but even if you don't.... please, please read this fabulous book.  Truly life changing.  

I'm a Recovering Good Girl

I'm a try-hard.  Actually, I'm a try-harder, since try-hard never manages to measure up.  And I care desperately what you have to say to me, about me, about my worth.

(As Emily P. Freeman says, "If you wonder what gives you the authority to define me, I will say it is because you exist.  I must have worth and it is up to you to give it to me…I beg you to see me, to notice my goodness, to ignore my failure, to be inspired by my beauty, to be captivated by my essence." (Grace for the Good Girl, p. 17, 18)

I shouldn't do that, of course.  

I know where my value comes from.

But I am afflicted with a syndrome that makes me ever striving toward a make believe notion of good enough.

I am a good girl.

And this book?  Grace for the Good Girl by Emily P. Freeman…. Well, I'm only on chapter 1, but it's rocking my socks off. 

"I taught people around me that I had no needs and then was secretly angry with them for believing me.  Somewhere along the way, I got the message that salvation is by faith alone but anything after that is faith plus my hard work and sweet disposition." (GFTGG p. 13, 14)

Can I get an "amen"? 

…And all the bloggers said…Amen.

Maybe you're a good girl too.

If you'd asked me a month ago if I was a good girl, I'd have shook my head.  Nope.  Not hardly.  Good implies … well… good.  And I never feel good.  Not really.  I'm not even well behaved.  I am prone to surfing the internet when I should be cooking something nutritious for my family and craving a glass of wine every now and then and ten minutes ago, I devoured an entire king-size Snickers bar without coming up for air.  I sometimes watch rated R movies and used the "s" word yesterday and considered, at least twice this week, running away to join the circus.

Good girls don't do things like that.

Reading this book, though, makes me realize just how much good girls do do things like that.  They tell themselves all kinds of lies about the hundred arbitrary ways they'll never measure up… and then suffer in the misery of persistent failure.

If you don't already have a copy of this book, do yourself a favor.  Join me.  Buy it, read it, soak up the truth that has already begun to penetrate my mask-wearing heart.  And thank you, Emily P. Freeman, for writing such honest and beautiful words that cut to the core of this people-pleasing, try-hard heart.

Linking up to: www.mommadaybyday.blogspot.com.

Buy this book through my Amazon affiliate link and support WhimsySmitten.com!