Feeling defeated pushes us further into our cycle of trying harder to measure up to God’s standards. Becoming like Jesus is difficult enough without this “Try harder!” mentality we force upon ourselves. It sucks us into a cycle of “I must do better,” “I ought to pray more,” and “I should be spiritually more mature by now.”
But can you see that this keeps us focused on ourselves and on the things we can’t do?
Paul, ever the exhort-er, says we’re to push toward the ideal, but these standards were never meant as imperative “ought-to” statements demanding immediate perfection from us. Perhaps more than any one of us, Paul understands our desperate need for God’s grace.
God wants us focused on the things He can do through us.
Our objective is to make every effort to mature into believers who think just like Jesus. We may slip, we may fail horribly, but we press on to take hold of the abundant life. Make sure today that you check your focus on what He can do through you, it will be enough and you wont have to “try harder”!
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