Nobody's Perfect

By Andrea Merrell

Perfectionism is hard to overcome. I know from experience; it’s something I’ve struggled with most of my life.

With low self-esteem and a desire to please people, I constantly tried to live up to the expectations of those around me—or at least my interpretation of their expectations. As soon as I felt I had finally achieved the standards and hit the target set by others, boom! Their expectations and standards changed. And there I was … back to square one.

Not a pleasant way to live life, but it’s a repetitive cycle that’s nearly impossible to break out of, at least until we recognize the problem and look to Jesus as our only standard.

Pleasing people only brings temporary happiness. Pleasing God brings lasting joy and the ultimate fulfillment. God doesn’t look for perfection. He looks for a heart that is fully devoted and committed to Him.

This is what we’re instructed to do in Romans 12:1-2:

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you (MSG).

Do everything you do as unto the Lord, and don’t worry about what other people think. The truth is nobody’s perfect … well, nobody but Him.

(Photos courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net/CoolDesign.)

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Pleasing people brings temporary happiness. Pleasing God brings lasting joy and fulfillment. (Click to Tweet.)

God doesn’t look for perfection. He looks for a heart that is fully devoted and committed to Him. (Click to Tweet.)

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