Good day friends! A couple days back I was reading my Bible and came across a verse that challenged me immensely.
How often in your life do you come across things that seem gray? I know for me it happens all the time. Is it really wrong or just a case of conscious or opinion? How do you tell if something goes against what Jesus approves of and what isn’t really clear?
Let me tell you about the passage I came across. Proverbs 2:20-22 says “That thou mayest walk in the way of good men, and keep the paths of the righteous.
For the upright shall dwell in the land and the perfect shall remain in it.
But the wicked shall be cut off from the earth, and the transgressors shall be rooted out of it.”
What sets us apart from the transgressors? Grace. The amazing blood of our Lord who took all of Himself and somehow put it into an earthly human body. God incarnated. It’s so hard to understand. One of my friends recently wrote a post about that very thing, and you can read it here. But moving forward I just wanted to ask you this. Grace sets us apart, right? What then does that mean to us? Here in Proverbs the difference is so boldly stated, there is no gray area. How do we know what side our actions put us on?
The options are upright and perfect, or wicked and transgressor.
Gray is gone. It’s gone.
We are to be perfect. Absolutely spotless, holy, worthy of God’s time and attention. Anything outside of this is vain, empty and worthless.
With perfection as our everyday goal we lose sight of the actual point. Y’all, perfect is impossible, right? There’s no way for us to ever reach this until we die. It’s the human nature and worldly flesh in us. So we reach for striving. That’s all we can do is try. Strain and pray and repent and try again to be perfect. But so often we forget to be perfect. Those gray areas are often absolutely annihilated when we place it up against the test of perfection.
That video game that I was playing. Perfect? Not by a long shot. Then why am I so inclined to compromise?
I deleted it.
The thoughts I’m dwelling on, the goals in my head, the things I spend my time on and effort I put into things. They should give an impression of perfection. It’s hard enough for me to work towards perfection, towards pure holiness with the flesh that constantly fights inside me. These easy things that I can change in a moment, why do I let them stay gray?
I don’t want to anymore. Gray is vain. The places where I can’t tell right or wrong are so often dismissed simply by bringing up the Perfection measurement. I want to do that more often. I want to live life with passion, with fire for Christ. Gray blurs those lines and dulls the flame. I want to purge the gray, and make my life black and white. I want to sparkle and shine for Christ, not wallow in the place where it’s not really wrong, but not exactly perfect.
Do not give up on perfection girls. Do not let it drown your light and fade your influence. Fight, shine and proclaim your love and the Savior that came to earth to SAVE you.
Let’s strive this year to dismiss the gray in life and live pure white. Let’s strive again to be perfect.
Perfect.
Live, laugh, and love.
~Libby
Reading this post, I realized how much of what you said is true. This really touched my heart and made me think. I’ve been working on a story that talks a lot about “shades of grey,” and now here I am reading this post about exactly the same thing! <3 <3 Thank you for writing this!
Aww thank you for your comment! I’m so glad this story spoke to you. And yes. It just turns out to be so baffling sometimes. Trying to be perfect is impossible and we settle for less but then so many things start to blurr. I’d be interested in reading your story when you finish if you want to share it with me.