My Story

Romans 5:20 (VOICE)

When the law came into the picture, sin grew and grew; but wherever sin grew and spread, God’s grace was there in fuller, greater measure. No matter how much sin crept in, there was always more grace.

I never thought that I needed to be perfect to secure my salvation.  I was told that Jesus did that for me so I don’t think I had to work to earn it. I  feel worthy of His love.  Through my mistakes, I haven’t doubted his  goodness.  Through my challenges, I have always believed in God and knew about God, but I didn’t know God or have a relationship where I allowed Him to change me and other lives through me.

At church, I saw my mom tell the pastor how much she enjoyed the service and how his sermon spoke right to her.   She would joke that he must have insight into her life as he said just what she needed.  I never realized what a gift that was.  Now I know how easy it is to hear a good message and think of someone else who should have heard it, but she knew she needed it.  

Maybe my mom was able to see her own need for forgiveness because her sins were the kind our little town noticed. She was a single mom and usually worked as a bartender. Her friends rode Harleys.  She did a lot of partying.  She smoked and drank and swore and yelled a lot.  She was divorced from my dad.  They had a rocky and sometimes abusive relationship, but they still got together back and forth from the time I was born until I was in junior high.  Then she lived with someone else while I was in high school.

Jesus said to the woman who washed his feet in Luke 7:50, “Because you believed, you are saved from your sins. Go in peace.” I see my mom in this story and the peace and gratefulness she has when she leaves church. She is sometimes overcome with emotion because she knows what a gift it is to worship God. The sinful woman in this Bible story washed Jesus’ feet with her tears and dried them with her hair.  She poured perfume on them and kissed them many times.  Her actions were humbling and showed she knew what a gift it was to be in the presence of Jesus.  

My mom was always telling us how much she loved us, she took care of us, and brought us to church when she could.  But getting our family there wasn’t easy. She took a long time to get ready and we got ourselves ready.  We tried, but we didn’t have very nice clothes and our best efforts were sometimes lacking.   We were usually late getting there. She was often yelling and we were usually fighting in the backseat.  

I longed to be a more perfect looking family and it’s what I was usually thinking about throughout a church service.  Thoughts of our separateness filled my mind and other families caught my eye.  Families with a mom and dad where everyone seemed happy and got along.  I always noticed one family who had a daughter about my age.  She had  pretty clothes and her hair was shiny from being freshly washed and brushed AND she carried the Cabbage Patch doll I wanted.   I didn’t think our family was as good as theirs.

I knew Jesus loved me and didn’t think he would have given me a perfect family if He only loved me more.  I just wished He had.  I didn’t feel I belonged as I was.  I didn’t know that if Jesus was still alive, he might come and sit in the back row with us and not in the rows of the best looking families in the front.  He might even meet us downtown at the bar where my mom worked.  My mom kept bringing us to church because she seemed to understood that and a few other things I was not able to.

1. Jesus is accepting and loving of others.  He spent his time with tax collectors, sinners, and the Pharisees.  He knew they all needed Him.  

Mark 2:16-17 says, “When some teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw Jesus eating with such bad people, they asked his followers, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?”  When Jesus heard this, he said to them, “It is the sick people who need a doctor, not those who are healthy. I did not come to invite good people. I came to invite sinners.”

2. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” Romans 3:23

I thought looking put together meant you had it all together.   No one has it all together.  Some have sins we see easier than others, but we all fail daily.

3. Humbling ourselves before God and confessing our sins is what it takes to be right with God.  

Luke 18:13-14 describes how,  “The tax collector stood alone too. But when he prayed, he would not even look up to heaven. He felt very humble before God. He said, ‘O God, have mercy on me. I am a sinner!’ I tell you, when this man finished his prayer and went home, he was right with God. But the Pharisee, who felt that he was better than others, was not right with God. People who make themselves important will be made humble. But those who make themselves humble will be made important.”

3.  God is kind and patient and is the pathway to changed lives.

Romans 2:4 says, “God has been kind to you. He has been very patient, waiting for you to change. But you think nothing of his kindness. Maybe you don’t understand that God is kind to you so that you will decide to change your lives.”

I thought I could change my own life and be different from my own family. Like the Pharisees, I thought looking right could make things right in my life. Despite my best efforts, I could not fix all my insecurities and hurts.  I went to college and graduated.  I got a good teaching job and haven’t struggled with drugs and alcohol, but I still didn’t feel I was enough.  I have enough money to buy nicer clothes and can fix my own hair now, but thoughts of separateness and feelings of being less than others can still bubble within me.  These thoughts blind the magnitude of being in the presence of God, worshiping Him, and confessing my sins and having them forgiven.  My insecurities come across in my actions and create the separateness I wanted to avoid.   

I believed I was worthy of God’s love, but I just never let that be enough for me, so it could change me, from the inside out.  I looked for fulfillment in other things.  I measured my worth against others. It didn’t matter if I thought I was better or worse.  Neither result brought me closer to others, God, or the peace I wanted to feel.  I also measured myself by how others treated me and what others thought of me.  This made me exhausted and often let down.  

This emptiness and long search to feel worthy made me a seeker and this brought me to an active relationship with God.  As I come near to God, He has come near to me. I am changing by His power living inside of me and accepting every single day that He is the ONLY solution to my insecurities, loneliness, and thoughts that trap me.  I am reassured by 2 Corinthians 12:9, But the Lord said, “My grace is all you need. Only when you are weak can everything be done completely by my power.” So I will gladly boast about my weaknesses. Then Christ’s power can stay in me.

As I get to know Him and not just know about Him, I am led to pray, trust, think, and act in ways that will bring Him glory.   Through this new relationship I am becoming like my mom and I’m able to experience the joy and freedom it brings to rejoice in Him.

I pray when you look back at your own story, you can see his grace, justice, mercy, and kindness.

If I should speak then let it be

Of the grace that is greater than all my sin

Of when justice was served and where mercy wins

Of the kindness of Jesus that draws me in

Oh to tell you my story is to tell of Him

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