Unshackled Echo ~ May 15, 2019 ~ Progress Not Perfection Needs Progress

Progress not perfection is all that keeps us from giving up in despair at times, especially in the beginning. When we have never walked with God or have played the prodigal for so long the pig pen is all we know, it becomes first nature to do anything and everything but the will of God for us. When we come to begin the spiritual journey to freedom and new life, it can be so difficult to accept and utilize the grace that will enable us to make the right choices and steps.

There is often a lot of falling down and getting back up, asking for forgiveness and trying again. I am two days from six years clean and sober but had I not relapsed more than once since the first day I realized I was truly powerless and in need of help I would have seven and a half years. But I don't beat myself up over the relapses and the setbacks because I learn from them, they give me experience with which to help others, and because I believe in grace and forgiveness and a loving, understanding God who takes us forward from glory to glory and from hopeless to new life over time.

But before we get too comfortable in the idea that not moving forward as much or as quickly as we should is OK because we are only supposed to be making progress not be perfect, let us remember that we are called to strive for perfection and that to accept progress rather than perfection we need to be making progress.  When we have been in rebellion to God and in bondage for so long we know nothing but the slavery, to even look off in the distance from Egypt's border toward the Promised Land and decide to trust God and begin the journey is progress, even if we haven't taken a single step. But if time passes and we still haven't taken a step further than believing there is Promised Land and something different out there somewhere, we're not making progress.

At the start of the journey to freedom, we may look back so often it would seem our head is on a swivel. We might even make one step forward and two steps back at times. This period is often when we hear the encouragement of progress not perfection. I heard it often as I struggled. I would get about two weeks sober and then fall, having to start over again. It took me months to get one month clean and sober, which I celebrated by getting high and drunk.

But at the time, that indeed was progress. For a little while moving three feet forward and then six feet back is progress when compared to constantly going in the wrong direction. But if it doesn't become one step forward one step back, and then two steps forward one step back, there will never be any real progress. There has to come a point where there is more forward progress than negative movement or there is no progress.

The Israelites  got free from their slavery in Egypt, but they stopped making progress. They didn't return to the slavery of the past, but they also didn't experience the joy and blessing of the promise either. They wandered in circles in the desert for 40 years to finally reach a place they would have found theirs in a few months had they followed God. Most of them died in a dry place instead of in the lushness of promise. That's not progress.

Only God and you can honestly evaluate if you are still moving enough to be calling it progress or if you have begun to wander the desert. I myself have taken time away from pursuing the promise to spin in the sand of the desert. I can attest that it us a dry and miserable period where I thirsted for God, experiencing Him just enough to remember He's real and stay alive, to keep me from returning to slavery, but not enough to experience the flowing milk and honey of having my needs all met and living happy, joyous and free. If we have become the wanderer, we do not need to make things worse by beating ourselves up or reacting by refusing to try because we failed.

The truth is that whenever we begin trying on our own. we will come to a place of failure. We need grace to make progress. So let us be quick when we realize that we have stopped moving forward or when we continue to make U-turns that give back the yardage we have made to repent, ask for forgiveness and surrender to His direction. He will lead us out of the desert if we let Him. It may be quickly, it may be slowly, but it will happen. But may we not confuse slow with stationary.

Today's Unshackled Echo was previously published on

May 15, 2016.

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