It is in our messes that God can shine the brightest. We don’t need to hide our messy lives, but we do need Him to clean up for us. We can’t do it all on our own.
Life is Messy
Modified Transcript:
Hi it’s Kimberly from Well Christian Woman,
It might get a little bit messy today but stick with me because I think it’s in our life messes that god’s glory can shine the brightest.
These thoughts came about really this past week when my husband had commented to me that we as people tend to like to hide our messes from everyone around us.
I have an ostomy as part of the medical journey I’ve been on and it has complications from time to time so I had to ask him for some help and was busy apologizing to him for having to do that and how gross it is and all of that stuff. Of course, he told me not to worry about it, but it made him think about the fact that we want to hide all of our ‘messes’.
It stuck with me and I’ve been thinking about it because I think it’s so true of people in general and I think it’s definitely true of us as Christians.
- We want to put on our perfect family face.
- There’s no problem in our marriage.
- We have no financial struggles.
- We’re never lacking in faith or hope.
- We never struggle with fears or doubts or questions about our faith.
I think we feel pressure that we’re supposed to somehow be perfect, so anything that isn’t perfect we try to sweep under the rug and hide these things from other people.
We don’t have to do that, and the thing is, from God we can’t do that because he knows everything about us.
David says this very nicely in Psalm 139 1-4.
O Lord, you have searched me and know me! You know when I sit and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all of my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether. – Psalm 139 1-4
As much as we may try to hide things from others. As much as we even try to hide things from ourselves, we can’t hide things from God.
But that’s OK. In fact that’s a good thing. He knows us and he loves us anyway. He loves us so much in fact that Paul tells us in Romans 5:8
But God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners christ dies for us. – Romans 5:8
That is goodness. That is great, great news. It doesn’t say “when we were perfect” or “when we had everything carefully hidden away in the closet” or “when there is nothing messy about us that people can see”.
God knows everything about us. He loves us so much that Christ died for us.
We can take that to heart. We can realize that it is in our messes that God can shine the brightest because we need him to clean things up for us because we can’t do it ourselves.
We need his strength, we need his word and we need the encouragement of the community around us.
By being more vulnerable and more open and more willing to admit and see our weaknesses and our messes, we can get more and more strength through the one person who is perfect. The person who we can hope to come closer to in our messes.
That is encouragement for me today, that it is in our mess that God can shine the brightest and we can walk in that. I hope it is for you too.
That was beautiful Kim!