Written by Paul David Tripp, a contemporary pastor, author, and speaker. This is an excerpt from his book “New Morning Mercies.”
It is an intensely human endeavor. It is the quest we all pursue. We all want to feel good about ourselves. We all want to think that we are okay. It is a fearful and anxious quest from which only grace can free you. Here’s what happens to us all – we seek horizontally for the personal rest that we are to find vertically, and it never works. Looking to others for your inner sense of well-being is pointless. First, you will never be good enough, consistently enough, to get the regular praise of others that you are seeking. You’re going to mess up. You’re bound to disappoint. You will have a bad day. You’ll lose your way. At some point, you’ll say or do things that you shouldn’t. Add to this the fact that the people around you aren’t typically interested in taking on the burden of being your personal messiah. They don’t want to live with the responsibility of having your identity in their hands. Looking to people for your inner self-worth never works. The peace that success gives is unreliable as well. Since you are less than perfect, whatever success you are able to achieve will soon be followed by failure of some kind. Then there is the fact that the buzz of success is short-lived. It isn’t long before you’re searching for the next success to keep you going. That’s why the reality that Jesus has become your righteousness is so precious. His grace has forever freed us from needing to prove our righteousness and our worth. So we remind ourselves every day not to search horizontally for what we’ve already been given vertically. “And the effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness, and trust forever” (Isaiah 32:17). That righteousness is found in Christ alone.
Prayer:
A prayer often attributed to Wilfred Arlan Peterson (1900-1995), an American author.
You accept us–at times of self-doubt
Thank you, God of all,
Co-creator of our world,
For allowing us to be imperfectly made:
Because it makes us, if we are wise, forgiving.
Do you accept us as we are?
We condemn people too quickly:
We judge them for flawed thinking, disguised egotism,
Unworthy acquisitiveness, or skewed opinions.
But we can forgive them once we accept our own shadow,
And realize how well we ourselves fit
Into the ranks of a less than perfect human race.
You, Holy God, accept each of us,
Prophets tell us, just as we are:
Provided our moral judgments of others
Are reciprocally generous and compassionate.
Imperfection fits this evolving reality,
For the universe thrives on diversity,
Including random failure,
One of the very preconditions for the unfolding advances. May it be so.
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