Episode Details

Just how important is your image to you? The more you are driven by image, the more you are enslaved to performance. Do you deeply need everyone to see you win – is there a constant need for triumph – to look good – to be praised – to come out on top?

Tall pedestals create a long, hard fall, my friend.

This is real life and in real life there are battles in which you won’t always look good. There are times when you will fail and times when you will hurt. Times when your image will be disheveled. Are you just going to perform your way through that? Is it going to be more important for you to portray perfection than allow God to break you and work his perfection in you?

Look at a child. Aren’t they just perfect with their chubby little rolls and full face, open mouth giggles. Perfect babies, but so much growing to do. So much to learn. Still so much for them to become. My friends, that is us in our faith walk. As a child of God we are perfect in our creation, a true masterpiece of our Maker, yet we have so much growing to do. We are in process to becoming all we were created to be. And that process is sometimes messy, sometimes brutal, sometimes really imperfect.

There’s a work happening within each of us from the moment we accept Jesus as the LORD of our lives. That’s a work of the Holy Spirit. God’s presence dwells within us and cleans house. We’re undergoing a continual demo work inside. A reworking and restructuring of our attitude, our perspective, our desires and our priorities. And really, that’s what our entire lifetime here on earth is – the work of the Holy Spirit within us, growing us, teaching us, molding us, perfecting us.

When will that work be done? Not here. Not in this lifetime. But when we get to our eternal destination of glory, then the work in us will finally be complete. That will be our mark of perfection.

But here on earth as we’re walking out our lifetime, we’re not going to be perfect. We’re going to continually be a work of progress under the direction of the Holy Spirit.

Will you be willing to just show that? Really, that’s what this world needs. But not only the world as a whole, but your world, your little circle, your community, your office, your family – they need to see the work God is doing in you. In order for them to see that work, they need to know you struggle, they need to know you don’t really just wake up like that, they need to see behind the curtain, without the makeup, on the hard days where you still just show up and partner with the work the Holy Spirit is doing in you.

When you’re in performance mode with your display of perfection to be praised, you may look good but let me tell you what that’s doing for the people around you – it’s making it easy for them to see you, but hard to see your God. Everyone around you is dealing with a tinge of insignificance, a hint of ‘not good enough’ and when you dare to be real with them you allow space for their struggle to meet the Holy Spirit you carry.

Girl, you carry the presence of God in you. There’s zero need for you to portray yourself as perfect – there’s absolutely EVERY NEED for you to make space for the perfection of God. That means you’re going to have to admit you struggle too. You’re going to have to be make friends with that unpolished part of you that you would prefer no one else see.

What would you rather see – my perfection that tells you I’m perhaps better than you …. or the parts of me that God is still working on that show you if God loves, chooses and uses me in my state, he can love, choose and use you in yours.

Girls, why are we getting this so wrong? Why do we struggle with this balance? This life is not a performance to look impressive – this life is an opportunity to carry the presence of God and point to the working power of the Holy Spirit available to each one of us.

Paul says in Philippians 3:12-14, “I don’t mean to say that I hav