I need to make myself better

Every once in a while, as I’m talking with a friend they will something like this, “I’ trying to make myself better”, or “I need to make myself better.” When I hear this my heart breaks and I want to say, “STOP” (insert the zipper sound here) do you hear what you’re saying?

I want to remind them that, not one of us can “make ourselves better”. It’s not possible, if it were possible, would we have needed a savior? Ummmm no, (just in case you were not sure of the answer I was going for). But we do need a savior because it’s impossible to make ourselves better. Only one person can do that, you guessed it, God.

I want to remind them that, we are all human and even as a Christian we are not free from sin. By that I mean we are not perfect. We may fall into a mud pit, we just don’t have to stay there. Praise God for that!!! We can ask God to lift us out of the pit and set us on solid ground. The awesome thing is that he loves us soooo much that he wants to do that for us anyway. We just need to ask him.

I would also remind them that, if we’ve asked God to wash us and make us clean, the only person we have to be better than is the person we were yesterday. We have a God who does not show partiality. He does not care if you are the president or a homeless beggar; a multimillionaire or a pauper. The ground is level for everyone. He sees everyone of as a sinner for whom he died. We cannot do one thing to make our self-appear better before Christ. If God does not compare us to anyone else we don’t need to compare ourselves to anyone else either. There is not a person on the planet that has not struggled with feeling inadequate at one time or another. I know I do, sometimes daily. I believe it is one way Satan keeps us defeated and paralyzed. He simply says, “You need to be better.”

So relax, if you feel the need to better yourself, go to God let HIM better you. It’s much easier than trying to do it yourself. You should know that God loves you just the way you are warts and all.

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