Growing Pains

I meet weekly with some good friends in my living room to talk about books that we are reading. They are Christian non-fiction books by Francis Chan, Craig Groeschel, Chip Ingram, etc. We have amazing discussions and are able to share struggles and encourage each other in our walks with Christ and in being wives and mothers. I love these nights and I love these ladies.

I have been thinking a lot about something that seems to come up periodically in our talks. Many of these authors really challenge us to be “all in” for God. The bar is high and the examples of radical discipleship are real challenges and often far from where we live our everyday lives. Our response is often “That is awesome but I don’t even come close to that.” Or “I sometimes question if I am really a follower based on what I am reading.” Or just basically “I suck.”

Some thoughts have come to my mind as I try to process and respond to that.

• It’s a process. The examples in the books and the standards that God sets are really high. I can’t imagine living that way 100% right after being saved. I often feel led to look back and self-evaluate. Am I doing better than I was a year ago? Am I moving towards looking more and more like Christ or am I basically standing still?

• Would we really want it to be easy? Saying yes to God at the beginning is not necessarily hard. Turning every aspect of your life over to Him and submitting ALL is hard. To live every day with Him as the Lord of your finances and your time and your parenting and your marriage and your decisions is not natural. But if it was just a switch we could throw, we wouldn’t learn to depend on Him. We wouldn’t fully appreciate the process and the growth. We wouldn’t fully appreciate his grace when we turn things over to him and then take them back and then turn them back over to him, etc. etc. etc.

• More sin awareness. More grace awareness. The more I grow in my faith, the more I become aware of my sin. I am able to see it more clearly and I am more disgusted with how far short I fall from God’s mark. Sometimes I think that is why the statements above come out. We are growing and we see just how crappy we can be. BUT....the good part is that the more we see our shortcomings and our sin, the more we are thankful for God’s grace! When we are feeling really good about ourselves and our Christian life, what do we need God for? If I read books that perfectly described me and what my walk looked like, what would be the point? My Grace Group just finished a study and one of my takeaways from it was “The bigger my awarenes of my sin is, the bigger my view of the power of the cross will be in my life.”

Books and speakers and friends who challenge me to live more fully devoted to God are my favorite. If I had a choice between a sermon that made me feel all warm and fuzzy or a sermon that showed me what I am not doing well and taught me to do better....I would choose the 2^nd one every time. I love when a little seed is planted deep in my soul and I am convicted to repent or stretch myself or change or speak up.

My prayer for my friends in my living room is that they come away feeling more conviction than they do comdemnation.