It Was Never About Me | Week 5

During the Fall 2019 cycle of Redemption Groups, we’ve tasked an anonymous blogger with sharing their experience. The goal is to give you a taste of the power of Jesus that we get to see a glimpse of in Redemption Groups, and help you see why they are essential for the life of a TPC partner. This is the fifth of 7 entries.

These posts will only include the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of the anonymous blogger.

God keeps peeling back layers. He saves us in a moment and then for the rest of our lives He continues to reveal dimension after dimension of what that means about us and especially about who He is.

God saved me as a young kid. Growing up I was told often and by many that I was “wise beyond my years”. I was treated as though my value was found in my relationship with Jesus. I felt like through people’s eyes, I was different and set apart and that somehow everyone thought of me as “that person that knows Jesus deeply”. This may sound boastful, it kind of does to me as I’m typing, but I’m not making this perspective up. People over the years have told me these things and have seen this in me.

Slowly I am understanding that they saw Him in me. But I have definitely clung to this in a self righteous way. I see that in a way, I have let my own name get in the way of the One who actually makes me righteous. The pain and suffering I have been going through more recently now as an adult has helped expose this to me.

After this week at RG’s it’s become real to me how much value I put in my own name, what I do or don’t do that makes me feel like a good follower of Jesus.

I have not felt like a good follower of Jesus lately. Probably because, through God’s sovereign grace towards me, I see face to face the very ugly sinful parts of myself. Thanks be to God. Because for a while now, I had been thinking like I was the righteous one, like I was the holy one. That I was going to be the perfect spouse, the perfect parent, the perfect friend because I am following Jesus.

I see in this, how small I have made God and all that He has actually done for me. I have minimized Him and made myself big with my feelings. As long as I felt good and that I was such a good follower of Jesus, I’d be good and probably wouldn’t hit bumps in the road. Little did I know, now a few years into my twenties, He has been leading me into this mysterious place of suffering…

I shared with my group this week how a little over a year ago I prayed to God “Put my weaknesses on display”. Ha. He definitely, definitely helped me with this… I don’t really hear His voice like I used to, I don’t really talk to Him like I used to, life looks very different now and I don’t know what He is doing in my life, because I don’t feel close to Him like I used to.

But in the most relieving sense, it has never been about me being righteous and perfect. The more I grow in my faith and with the help of redemption groups, I not only see my sin layer by layer, but layer by layer I see how HE has been righteous for me, how HE is being perfect for me.

I thought I was strong but I am weak and He has put it on display. I relate to David when he said “Why so downcast oh my soul? Put your hope in God!” When I see my sin and put my hope in myself, I grow miserable & downcast. Of course I do. But all along, it hasn’t been about what I’ve done, its been about all that He has done. It’s His righteousness, His perfection. I get to be weak and broken and let Him be my strength.

Though I’ve felt so much shift in my life lately, deep down I know He is right here with me just like He has been over all these year. Even while I began to make God small and myself big out my sin. He died for this. And He is faithful to reveal where we have went wrong. He is big enough to do this while constantly staying faithful to us.