A. There’s a story told of a preacher who was preaching a message about the fact that no one is perfect.
1. To prove his point he asked for anyone who was perfect to stand up.
2. One man stood up in the middle of the congregation.
3. The preacher asked him, “Do you really think you are perfect?”
4. The man replied, “Oh no! I’m not perfect. I’m standing up on behalf of my wife’s first husband!”
B. In a book called, Children’s Letters to God, a little boy wrote, “Dear God, I’m doing the best I can. Frank.”
1. I think that is a prayer that most of us either do pray, or feel like praying.
2. And I believe it is a prayer that God understands and appreciates.
C. Today’s message has been stirring around in my heart and mind for weeks, and I hope and pray that it comes out in a way that is clear and helpful.
1. Let me give you the “short and sweet” of what I’m trying to say today, “Perfection is unattainable, and it is worth aiming toward, but God loves us, even in our imperfection.”
2. In today’s lesson, I’m not promoting a lowering of our standards, nor an acceptance of sin in our lives.
3. What I will be doing is challenging us to not give up in the midst of our imperfection.
4. I’m encouraging us not to punish ourselves with our failures.
5. And I want us all to realize that failure does not disqualify us from participation in the life and work of the church. If it did, then there would be no one in the church!
D. Someone gave me a book a few years back called Messy Spirituality, by Michael Yaconelli.
1. I read much of the book at the time I received it, and I’ve been revisiting the book over the past month as I thought about this message.
2. Most of my thoughts today are prompted by Yaconelli’s words from that book.
E. For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to be a godly person.
1. Like most or all of you, I want to be a good person. I don’t want to fail.
2. I want to know God better. I want to be consistent in my walk with God.
3. I want to be remembered someday as a person who loved God, who served others more than he served himself, and who was trying to grow in maturity and stability.
4. But even though I want all those things and try hard to make them a reality in my life, I so often fall short of those goals.
5. Even though I am an elder and minister and I think about Jesus every day, my following of Jesus is inconsistent.
6. The main consistency in my life is my inconsistency. Can you relate to that?
F. I want to be a spiritual person, but the way I think about spirituality or judge myself about my spirituality, is often faulty.
1. When we think about spirituality, we commonly think of a person who prays all day long, who reads their Bibles consistently, who never gets angry or rattled, who possesses special powers and has an inside track to God.
2. So spirituality, then, has an “otherworldly” ring to it.
3. We picture people who have forsaken the world, taken vows of poverty and have isolated themselves in cloisters.
4. Perhaps that is a certain kind of spirituality that works for some, but what about the rest of us?
5. What does spirituality look like for those of us who live in the city, who work sixty hours a week, or who have a family?
6. What about those of us who are divorced and who are still trying to heal from the scars of rejection, or are trying to cope with the single-parenting of children who don’t understand why this has happened to them?
7. What does spirituality look like for us imperfect people struggling in an imperfect world and in imperfect situations?
G. What I want to grasp for myself, and encourage others to embrace is the notion that spirituality is not a formula – it is a relationship.
1. Spirituality is not about competency – it is about intimacy.
2. Spirituality is not about perfection – it is about connection.
3. Accepting the reality of our broken, flawed lives is the beginning of spirituality.
4. So, Spirituality is not about being fixed and finished – it is about God being present in the mess and unfinishedness of our lives.
H. When I look in the Bible, I see that its pages overflow with messy people.
1. The biblical writers did not edit out the flaws of its heroes.
2. Just look at the text of our Scripture reading for today from Hebrews 11:32-34.
3. Listed there are Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David and Samuel.
4. How perfect were all of them in their lives and in their service to God?
5. They were very imperfect, yet look at what God did through them!
6. Notice the end of verse 34, “whose weakness was turned to strength…”
7. That’s what God does in and through spiritually inconsistent and messy people!
I. Consider the “greats” of the Old Testament.
1. Adam and Eve didn’t get us started on a very good footing.
2. God decided to start things all over with Noah. He built a nice boat and saved his family and the animals, then what happened? He came off the boat and got naked and drunk.
3. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – they all struggled with consistency.
4. Moses and David – both a mixture of good and bad, right?
5. The men and women of the OT could be gentle, holy, defenders of the faith one minute, and then they could be insecure, unstable, unbelieving, shrewd, lying individuals the next.
J. The New Testament characters weren’t much better.
1. Jesus’ disciples were hardly models of saintliness.
2. They were committed to Jesus, and were ready and willing to follow him anywhere, but they were also troubled by infighting, always jockeying for position, impulsive, selfish, and disloyal.
3. Most of the time, they didn’t understand what Jesus was talking about.
K. Please don’t misunderstand me, by pointing out the flaws of OT and NT people, I’m not suggesting that we have a free pass, therefore, to do whatever we want to do.
1. We still must be aiming for perfection (2 Cor. 13:11).
2. We cannot live in sin and be right with God or in fellowship with God’s people.
3. Hypocrisy is not the same thing as imperfection.
4 Hypocrisy is defined as “the practice of professing beliefs, feelings, or virtues that one does not hold or possess; falseness.”
5. The hypocrite is the one who claims to stand for Christ and for the Christian way, but has no intention of trying to bring his or her life into conformity with God’s will.
6. It is not hypocritical to try to live like Christ and fail, as long as we are honestly trying to live for Christ, and then are honest about our failures.
7. In truth, all of us are hopelessly flawed and yet are graciously forgiven.
L. What I hope and pray that we can promote in our fellowship is an environment where we can be honest about our struggles and find the support and help we need to make progress.
1. As the classic statement goes, “The church is not a hotel for saints, but a hospital for sinners.”
2. I hope that we can be a people who celebrate and embrace a discipleship which is “under construction.” Like most of the roads here in central New York.
3. Our discipleship is and will always be incomplete and unfinished.
4. Following Christ is anything but tidy and neat, balanced and orderly.
5. Spirituality is anything but a straight line – it is a topsy-turvy, helter-skelter godliness that often takes two steps forward and one step back.
M. But unfortunately, when we come to worship and look around at our brothers and sisters in Christ, it often seems like everyone is doing great in every way, and so no one would understand my struggles or accept me if I shared the truth of what is going on with me.
1. Keith Miller wrote, “Our churches are filled with people who outwardly look contented and at peace but inwardly are crying out for someone to love them…just as they are – confused, frustrated, often frightened, guilty, and often unable to communicate even within their own families. But the other people in the church look so happy and contented that one seldom has the courage to admit his own deep needs before such a self-sufficient group as the average church meeting appears to be.”
2. One of the Peanuts cartoons starts with Lucy at her five-cent psychology booth and Charlie Brown has stopped for advice about life.
a. Lucy says, “Life is like a deck chair, Charlie Brown, on the cruise ship of life. Some people place their deck chair at the rear of the ship so they can see where they’ve been. Others place their deck chair at the front of the ship so they can see where they’re going.”
b. The good “doctor” Lucy looks at her puzzled client and asks, “Which way is your deck chair facing, Charlie Brown?”
c. Without hesitating, Charlie Brown replied, “I can’t even get my deck chair unfolded.”
3. Is that the way life and spiritual life often feels to you? Everyone has their deck chairs facing one direction or the other, and you can’t even get yours open?
4. But if we are honest, then we would all have to admit that we struggle with our deck chairs.
5. We may struggle to get them open, or struggle to decide which way to face them.
6. And when we face them one way we wonder if they are facing the right way, so we continually question their direction and may keep changing directions.
N. What difference would it make if we as God’s community could be more transparent about our successes and failures in walking with God?
1. What difference would that make for both Christians and non-Christians in our midst?
2. What are the dangers of hiding the truth about ourselves?
3. One person wrote, “He who thinks that he is finished is finished. Those who think that they have arrived, have lost their way. Those who think they have reached their goal, have missed it. Those who think they are saints, are demons.” (Henri Nouwen, The Genesee Diary)
4. The truth is that none of us are perfect – no not one (Rom. 3:10).
5. All of us struggle from time to time. We all have issues. We all have secrets.
6. None of us is completely who we appear to be.
7. But how refreshing and helpful it would be if we could be more open about the reality of the struggle to be God’s person.
8. It’s okay to be unfinished. It’s okay to be imperfect. And it’s okay to be honest about that.
9. If it is not okay to be unfinished and imperfect, then none of us are okay.
10. As I’ve already said, spirituality isn’t about being finished or perfect – it is about trusting God and working with God in our unfinishedness.
O. Here’s a truth I want us to embrace – Jesus is not repelled by us, no matter how messy we are, and regardless of how incomplete we are.
1. Look at Hebrews 2:17-18, “For this reason he had to be made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.”
2. And Hebrews 4:15-16, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”
3. From these verses we come to understand that Jesus went through the earthly ordeal with the struggle and suffering of temptation in order to make Him a merciful and faithful high priest.
4. Rather than being repelled by our struggles and failures with temptation, Jesus understands and is able to offer us grace and help in our time of need.
P. Embracing the love, acceptance, and help of God in our messiness, enables us to do the same with others.
1. Scripture tells us to “bear with each other, and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” (Col. 3:13)
2. Because of our messiness, we are not always going to do right to each other.
3. Most of the time, these hurtful things are not intentional, and we should give each other the benefit of the doubt.
4. Bearing with each other and forgiving each other doesn’t mean we don’t bring up those offenses, because we do need to know when we have done wrong or hurt others, so that we can try to do better next time.
5. But we must not be disillusioned by these things.
6. None of us are perfect, as I’ve been saying, and we are trying to get it right.
7. I can vouch for those I work with most closely. I know their hearts.
8. I know that we, elders, take our roles very seriously, and we are trying to do our best to shepherd this flock. I know that we do not and will not do that perfectly, but it’s not because we don’t care to do our best.
9. Roy and Sharon, Jon and I, we who work with the church, this is more than a job to us.
10. We care very much about this church family and the work we do to try to please God in this community.
11. I know that we do not do our work perfectly, but it is not because we don’t care and aren’t trying.
12. Please be patient with us, be careful with your judgment, and be gentle with your correction.
13. We do need to know if and when we are messing up so that we can do better.
14. And I pray that we can have a humble heart that wisely receives constructive criticism.
15. All of us are still “under construction” – God is finished with us yet.
Q. Another element that goes with bearing with each other is the ability to appreciate and accept our differences.
1. Someone has said, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd.”
2. We followers of Christ are odd; not just different from the world, but different from each other.
3. Jesus doesn’t make us the same – each of us is unique.
4. Our personalities, our brains, and our gifts and abilities are different.
5. The good thing about that is that our differences complement and complete each other.
6. The bad thing about that is that we sometimes don’t understand each other and we have disagreements because of our differences.
7. We must learn to accept the fact that we are not only going to be imperfect, but we are going to be distinctly different.
8. And we must learn to give God room to work with and through each other’s imperfection and distinctiveness.
R. I would like to wrap this lesson up by encouraging us to pursue spiritual growth.
1. I reject the notion that spiritual growth is a system, a set of principles, formulas, training programs, or books.
2. These kinds of things promise to produce maturity and depth if followed religiously.
3. Most of these programs are made up of the same ingredients: prayer, Bible study, service and community.
4. And while I believe that prayer, Bible study, service and community contribute to spiritual growth, there is more to it than that.
5. Saying those things produce spiritual growth is like saying that drinking milk, and eating vegetables produce physical growth.
6. Physical and spiritual growth cannot be reduced to mechanics.
7. Michael Yaconelli wrote, “Spiritual growth is more than a procedure; it’s a wild search for God in the tangled jungle of our souls, a search which involves a volatile mix of messy reality, wild freedom, frustrating stuckness, increasing slowness, and a healthy dose of gratitude.” (pg. 88)
S. Toward the end of his book, Yaconelli gives what he calls non-principles for spiritual growth:
1. First, Spiritual growth encompasses a lifetime of decisions.
a. We would like to think that growth results from one mighty decision, a once-and-for-all commitment to God.
b. But our initial decision to follow Christ is just the first of many decisions that bring growth. We grow one decision at a time. Some decisions take us forward, some back.
2. Second, Spiritual growth looks different for each of us.
a. Genuine growth follows as many patterns as there are people.
b. Spiritual growth can’t be cloned, manipulated, systematized, or predicted.
c. True spiritual grow looks different for each of us.
3. Third, Give God 60 percent.
a. Certainly we strive for 100 percent, we want to give 100 percent, we wish we could give 100 percent, but life isn’t quite so simple.
b. Sometimes 60 percent is 100 percent of all we have to give.
c. I trust that God will show up in whatever percentage we give him, which motivates us to give even more.
4. Fourth, Reluctant growth is still growth.
a. Many times we will discover we have grown even when we weren’t trying to grow.
b. Maybe we had a bad attitude, or the wrong attitude, but God showed up anyhow and did a good work in us, even though we were reluctant.
T. My fervent prayer as I end this sermon is that each of us can hear the crystal-clear voice of God saying, “I love you.”
1. God loves each of us, even in our incompleteness, our incompetence, and in our messiness.
2. Nothing can stop God from loving you and me.
3. Paul wrote, “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom. 8:38-39)
4. I believe that God specializes in employing his faithful, imperfect people.
5. Ultimately, spirituality is about faithfully doing small acts to God’s glory and God then does extraordinary things through ordinary people, like you and me.
6. What a great and humbling adventure we are called to!
7. Praise God for His love and patience, and His power to bring strength and transformation to our imperfect lives!
