THE INNER WORKINGS...

humbly human

I have a confession to make. Sure, a newsletter isn't the typical place to tell deep, dark secrets, but I just needed to get this off of my chest. I needed to shoot straight with all of you. So here it goes (deep breath)... I'm not superwoman.

You're not surprised? I sure was when I first made this discovery. And, to be honest, I don't know that I've truly come to terms with it all. Some of you might be thinking, "What does she mean she's not superwoman?" No, we're not talking in terms of wearing a cape or of being able to snap steel posts in two. I do, however, have other superhuman delusions. I think I can fix other people's problems. I think that I handle all of my responsibilities and those of everyone else. I think that I can control ministry. I think that I need to hide my weakness in order to be strong.

There's always been a passage in the Bible that has bothered me. Actually, there are quite a few passages that bother me, and most of them have to do with God looking at what we believe rather than what we do. I think that Jesus said things like that to comfort people, but honestly it kind of puts me on edge. Because, to be frank, I've gotten pretty good at "doing" Christian things. I'm a missionary, for goodness sake. But compared to what is going on in my heart, God could care less about my profession. He wants to know that I trust him, not that I know more worship songs than my other friends.

The troublesome passage goes like this: Jesus is being accused by a group of which, had I lived in the first century AD, I probably would been a card-carrying member. Back then, they were called Pharisees. They were the religious ones. The ones that thought they had it all together. The ones that trusted themselves more than they trusted God. And they were getting uptight because Jesus kept hanging out with the wrong crowd. Instead of going over to the Pharisee's house, Jesus chose to dine at the home of the corrupt and crooked tax collector. And when confronted about the company that he kept, Jesus justified his choice by saying:

"It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but the sinners."

And that's where the trouble comes. Because I would always secretly identify with the hypocritical religious leaders, I would always wonder, what does this mean for me? What happens to those of us that are doing pretty good? Who have it mostly together? Who have a fairly clean bill of health? Surely He's not forgetting about us!

And then, just a few weeks ago, it finally hit me: Jesus wasn't excluding anybody. He wasn't dividing humankind into two categories, the "healthy" and the "sick". Because, as the Holy Spirit showed me, we're all sick and in need of a doctor. It's just that some of us don't know it. We grow throughout life convincing ourselves that the little cough that we have is not an illness, that we're just fine, and we don't need to be healed. When I get frustrated with my teammate and nearly bite her head off, it's not a sign of deep-rooted sin, it's just a small slip due to the fact I only slept for a few hours the night before.

But this is simply delusion. And the worst part about it is that I really don't want anyone to find out about my state of health. I want everyone to think that I'm perfectly fine. But they can hear me coughing, and they can see my symptoms of sin. I really thought I had most fooled, but it turns out that I was really just fooling myself. Everyone else knew I wasn't superwoman. And so I just want to come clean with you and with myself. I'm sick. I'm broken. I'm rotten and sinful. And I need a Doctor. Because without Him, I'm heading for death.

posted by Courtney @ 1:51 AM