Suffering from Not Good Enough Syndrome is very common, and some of the worst sufferers may appear to be quite good and successful. Some who would never allow themselves enough slack to hang themselves and who appear to the outside world to have it all together are often miserable within and kill themselves with the weight of the burden to continue to perform. The drive for perfection in and of ourselves is a response to knowing and understanding we are not right, we are not as we should be and some innate sense we could and should do and be more.
Perhaps you think this is not you. Perhaps you are like me, were always wondering why one should wear themselves out with the time and energy it takes to make an A when C is passing. Maybe you believe a messy house is a sign of life rather than moral failure and that we were never intended to dwell in museums. But there is also a truth that if we aim for perfection and fall short we might still pass, but if we aim for average and passing and fall short it usually means failure. This is not just true in education, job performance and the responsibilities of life, but in the moral and spiritual realms as well.
For those who like me saw the mark of perfection like a canyon we could not leap across and sold our lives into bondage trying to escape, numb and distract from the symptoms of NGES, the destruction caused by a life of addiction only took us further from being good enough. I remember repeated occasions during the years of bondage where I knew something had to change. I hated life. I hated the guilt and shame that seasoned every day with bitterness and misery. My response, over and over again, was a determination to get right with God and to live right.
I would step away from the chemicals and other things I used to change the way I felt for a day or two, perhaps even a few weeks, and would set myself to do all those things that I thought would make me a good person, being nice to people, not lying, not sneaking around, reading the Bible, going to church and living like a good Christian, and a list of many other characteristics and behaviors of people who were good, or at least good enough. Somewhere deep within was the hope that if I could just get my life together and be who and how I should be then God would accept me, my life would be worth living and I would finally be happy. I leapt from living like nothing mattered but feeling relief and distraction in the moment, as though there were no right and wrong but only whether you could get away with it, to living as though nothing mattered by doing it right and being good enough.
It never lasted long, although I could wear the mask of performance a little longer than the attempt to do it right. If I couldn't be right for real, maybe I could at least fake it and hide how messed up I was. I had fallen into that same pit as the perfectionists who never relaxed in the fight to perform. But I could only stretch out so far before my inadequacy snapped me back, usually to a place further off the mark than before. I went from the pit of performance straight into the pit of why bother? What's the point in trying when I am only going to fail? If I am going to eventually drink and drug again, why put myself through the torture or waiting and trying not to? If I am going to fall short of being good, isn't it better, or at least easier, to simply embrace being bad, accept who I am am and be good at being bad? Eat, drink and be merry, and maybe tomorrow God will finally let me die.
But when we strive to perform to make ourselves good enough, and even when we do the opposite out of hopelessness, we miss the truth of who God is. The beautiful and amazing truth of God's love is that He loves me and He loves you on the basis of His heart, and not on our actions. His mercy and love is a one way street flowing out from Him to us, and does not depend on our ability or performance to receive it. We don't have to and can't live for grace. What I mean by that is that we don't do it right enough to qualify for help, for a life worth living, and we don't perform well enough to make Daddy proud and earn His acceptance.
Instead, we can live from grace. By understanding that we don't have to be good enough and can't we throw ourselves completely on the mercy of the work of Jesus on our behalf. We don't get cleaned up to take a bath. We don't get our lives together to come or return to Daddy. We run home, covered in pig slop and stinking, and He cleans us up. He gives us the power to live differently. We stop trying to live by our strength, determination and might and rely on His power. Suddenly we can do what we could never do before, because it is not us doing it. It is the Spirit in us that enables us to deny self, to love God and love others, and to obey.
We can live rightly and well, not because we change, but because He changes and empowers us. We don't have to reject perfection and embrace wrong. We don't have to find perfection within ourselves. We can rely on His perfection and His love. We can use His power to conquer our shortcomings and to remove our defects of character. And when we do fall short of the goal of perfect love, we can trust His forgiveness and the truth that His mercies are new every morning. In relationship with Daddy, we find the strength to live as we know we should but can't, we find freedom from the bondage of the things we used to relieve the symptoms of NGES, and we find the cure to the disease of spirit. In the grace that gives us the power to do right, we find peace, joy and love that doesn't ever have to be earned.
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