People, even loving and caring people have limits. There comes a point when they simply can't take any more. And because people, especially parents, are sometimes the source of our best yet flawed understanding of the nature of God, we believe that Daddy must have His limit as well. There has to be a point where grace ends and judgment begins. I've had it up to here, and now you're in for it, we imagine God finally saying.
Unlike my mother, God actually does demand perfection, and He knows even more than we do how incapable we are of reaching it. We look at our inability to measure up and either give up in despair or gut up and determine to do better, which is never good enough and which we can not sustain. How may times can we expect God to forgive this same stupid sin, we ask ourselves after falling once again into old behavior. Surely He's got to be tired of us never doing it right. Satan loves such lies. If he can convince us that God's love and mercy has a limit and an end we'll come to the logical conclusion that we must've have reached His breaking point by now.
Feeling we have no right or access to relationship with Daddy unleashes hell in our lives. There is no hope, nowhere to turn, nothing that can be done. What if we had one more act of forgiveness left to spend and we wasted it by giving up too early? So we dare not quit trying, but each day is lived in bondage to fear. We are afraid because we are ignorant of the truth of Daddy's love for us and mercy toward us.
If you haven't accepted what Jesus has already done for you and the forgiveness of God, then nothing can overcome the fear that will rule your life. Existence in part will consist of understanding that you are not good enough. No therapy, motivation or pleasure can fix that. No chemical can erase it, even though for a short time it may be numbed away. When it returns it will be even worse as the addictions to substitutes for relationship with God slowly or quickly begin killing us. Nothing can break the chains of fear other than grace.
The good news is that you don't have to be good enough. You don't have to measure up or perform to perfection. As good as my mother was at forgiving her sons, Daddy is even better at forgiving us. His mercies are new every morning, and we can never wear out our welcome with Him. Regardless of how your life has been, what Jesus did is enough to pay the price and bridge the gap, and the work on your behalf and mine is freely given to us.
If you have accepted what He has done for you, then you can ignore the voice that says there is no hope and that you should be afraid. You don't need to be afraid, because no matter what happens in your life, to you or what you might do wrong, God is quick to forgive and seeks to restore us to Himself. His grace is sufficient. No, you're not good enough, but you don't have to be. He loves us far more faithfully than even the best parents, like my mother, can love us. There is no end to what He will do to make us able to be His.
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