Rise Of The Truth Teller By Ashley AbercrombieSample

Day Six

Beauty in the Process

Scripture: Philippians 1:6

Before experiencing real freedom in my life in relationship with Christ, I actually thought that living without the pain of my past was impossible and addiction would always be my way of dealing with life. 

After saying yes to following Jesus, I thought I would arrive at this euphoria of being utterly unbothered and free of issues, problems, and pain. I thought the magic pill of salvation was about not only fixing things for good but also making me (and my life) perfect. 

Then I realized that’s probably some other religion. 

The Bible is full of hardcore, devoted-unto-death lovers of God and followers of Jesus, men and women who were stoned, imprisoned, beaten, abandoned, rejected, or martyred and made other unimaginable sacrifices. The triumphant, romanticized, whitewashed victory stories I heard in church for most of my adult life focused so often on the wins that I missed the process. I missed the cost. I missed the pain. I missed the time that it takes to see something good come from struggle. 

I was in for a rude awakening when I realized that perfection in the Bible was about me becoming whole, by becoming more like Christ, and not about me creating and controlling the narrative for my perfect, triumphant, and victorious life. 

Our devotion cannot be dependent on our personal happiness or our levels of satisfaction but on our trust. When we are finally willing to relinquish control and admit that the illusion of security we’ve imagined for ourselves is the lesser version of faith, we discover God, in his mystery and chaos, asking us to accept what is and to trust, surrender, and obey.

Surrender is the critical posture in the process. No time limits, no striving to achieve, no fixing it all the way we think it should be fixed, no manipulating or controlling to impact outcomes, no blaming and shaming others so we can wallow in what we don’t have the courage to change.

Surrender. Be present. You are doing the best you can where you are with what you have in your process of transformation. And you are loved exactly as you are, all the way through every single process of growth and change.

How have false ideas of “perfection” influenced your expectations of personal growth?