God doesn't guilt trip

Tonight I was lucky enough to get to do one of my favorite things in the world. A big group of us went to Newport beach for a late night worship session. I love people, I love the beach, and I love worship. It was such a good night.

My alone times with God have been few and far between the last couple of weeks. I've always had a problem with self-discipline in this area. As soon as I start reading I feel like I don't want to stop but for some reason, I have such a hard time reading regularly and before I know it, it's been a week or two since I've even opened my Bible! It's a constant guilt I take everywhere with me, and it effects my worship times. Tonight when I heard we were going to do worship on the beach, I was excited yet part of me was not looking forward to it. I felt as if I wasn't in a place to worship God. Like I was just picking up where I left off with God because my friends were doing worship. I feel like God wouldn't take this worship as right; like I have to wrack up some minutes in my Bible-time before I can worship. Sounds ridiculous right?

Even as I write this now, a part of me believes it. But tonight during worship God brought me back to His unfailing LOVE... his unjudgmental, pure view of me. He wants every piece of me I'm willing to give him. I think one of the most amazing things about God is that He is able now (because of Jesus) to look at us and not see us as we see ourselves. There has to come a time when we are able to push to be more and more like Jesus, but be okay with the fact that we will never achieve perfection. Striving for perfectionism isn't spirituality, knowing and loving Jesus is spirituality. Mike Yaconelli is probably my favorite author and he says in his book Messy Spirituality that, "Accepting the reality of our broken, flawed lives is the beginning of spirituality; because we let go of seeking perfection, and instead seek God."

I think sometimes we make our walks more complicated than they need to be. God appreciates simple I think. It's about Him, and about us loving Him, and about us letting God love on us.

One of the previous pastors at Rock Harbor Church, Ian DiOrio put it like this...

"God thinks more of you than you think of yourself because He knows who we really are... the sinful little mistakes you make now do not define you as much as the God who defines you! ... When we know whose we are, we know who we are... If you live out of the reality that you're a sinner, you're sick, you're broken, then that's all you're ever gonna be. But if you live out of the reality that your identity is firm in Christ and that there's nothing you can do to change His opinion of you then you will have freedom in your Christian life like you wouldn't believe because you know whose you are. You are accepted as you are, not as you should be, because you'll never be as you should be."

This is not the way we are taught to think about ourselves, nor is it the way we naturally see ourselves. I believe the only way to see ourselves this way, or even understand this idea of God seeing us this way, is through prayer. Prayer that asks God to help us go a little easier on ourselves. Prayer that asks a big God to teach us to see ourselves the way He sees us. Prayer that asks God to show us how to see others the way He sees them. And prayer that thanks our Abba for His Son, that made it possible for Him to see us this way.