Who I Am

“Tell me, once again who I am to You, who I am to You

Tell me, lest I forget who I am to You, that I belong to You...” 

Jason Gray, “Remind Me Who I Am”

     How often have I heard that we can “come as we are?” So many times in my life I have heard this message: Christ loves you for who you are, where you are right now. You don’t have to change or become perfect before coming to Him. That is, after all, the whole purpose of His death; He knew we were sinful and could never be without sin on our own, so He took the sin for us. All we have to do is accept. I know the verses. I’ve sang the songs. I can look in someone’s face and honestly believe this for him or her. Yet when I look in the mirror, I completely forget. 

     How can I be loved? How can I be accepted? In my mind I know that I am, but my heart refuses to believe it. I’m the “good Christian girl.” I need to live up to a certain standard in order to be accepted by God or by anyone else. I need to attain Perfection.

     If you hadn’t guessed by now, I’m a perfectionist. I often hold myself up to higher standards than I will ever be able to reach. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been able to make myself perfect. I need to love my neighbor. I need to provide for the poor and the needy. I need to tell others about Christ. I have felt so much pressure to DO, that I often DIDN’T. It seemed too overwhelming; how can I do everything that Christ requires of me? 

     I feel as though I owe God a debt of gratitude....Nothing I do can ever be good enough, because nothing I do can ever repay Christ for what He did for me. I am in a deep pit; I try to fill it with good deeds, but with every sin and failure the ground opens up and I fall deeper.

     “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God...” (Romans 3:23).

I am a failure. I’m not good enough. I don’t give enough to others. I don’t serve food at a homeless shelter. I don’t always love my neighbor. I don’t share my faith at the street corner...in fact, sharing my faith in general terrifies me; how can I ever be accepted by Christ if I fail in the Great Commission? Am I a broken Christian? I can’t tell others about my fears; what would they think of me? They would see me for who I am: a fraud, a fake, salt that has lost its flavor and fit for nothing other than being trampled on the street (Matt. 5:13).

Guilty.

Failure.

Unworthy.

These chains bind me, holding me down in the pit of my self-condemnation. 

     “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:23-24).

     What makes me think that I should be an exception to the “all have sinned” part? 

     What makes me think that I am not “justified freely by His grace?” 

I am not the “good one” who deserves God’s gift of forgiveness and eternal life. I am the sinner separated from God by my own nature, and so loved by Him that He placed the sin on His Son so that I can live forever with Him. He loves me that much. Me, a sinner.

     God has so much patience with me. Patience not only with my sin, but also with my unbelief. He loves me. The gift He gave me is free, and yet I continually try to repay Him for it. If I had a daughter, and I gave her a doll, I would not expect her to give me money for it or work every day to pay me back. I gave her the doll because I love her. I love her simply because she was born, and she is mine.

      “Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give  good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” (Matt. 7:9-11.) 

God freely gave me His grace. According to the New Oxford American Dictionary, this kind of grace is “the free and unmerited favor of God...” Free--and unmerited. We did not earn it in any way. God gave us this free gift while we were completely hopeless, in order to prove His love (Rom. 5:6-8), and so we could not brag about having a part in our salvation (Rom. 3:27-28).

     How many times have I heard these truths, storing them in my memory, yet completely disregarding them in my heart? Only through God’s power and grace have I been able to understand these things--or at least, began to truly believe them.

I pray that you understand this. This deep, deep love of God for you, and His grace, completely undeserved, yet freely given. Because He loves you.

     “I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge-that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 4:17a-19).