"Perfection" is a word that I have a fickle past with. When I was a child and a teen, my mom used to say she was perfect. Therefore, if I strived to be like her, I could also be perfect. This was before I was a Christian and I thought anyone could achieve perfection. However, I quickly started realizing over the years that perfection was not attainable. Maybe my mom could attain it, but I certainly could not.
When I first started college, I started hearing about the gospel and how nobody is perfect but God alone. This came as a shock to me since I had been taught differently for my entire life. If the Bible said that only God was perfect, then it was true (Mark 10:18; 2 Samuel 22:31). I understood the authority of the Bible at this time, yet I was still taking baby steps in my knowledge of the gospel as well as the more advanced teachings of the Bible.
As I continued to attend college, my mother started having her heart condition flare-ups again. Short tempers, anger outbursts, and silent treatments led me to the conclusion that my mother was not perfect. The final moment that taught me she was human just like me was when she was in the hospital bed, with a machine at the end of her bed pumping her heart. At that moment, I saw how weak and imperfect my mother was. And we all are.
None of us are perfect. We cannot obtain perfection nor should we attempt to strive for it. It will only leave us feeling broken, hurt, and exhausted. Perfection is not attainable for anyone, regardless of how good we are at school, work, or life. The Bible tells us clearly that we all sin and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23).
With this information, we need to accept our imperfections. Rather than continuing to strive after perfection, we need to lay the armor down. Perfection is nothing we can achieve nor can we hide behind it. Sure, we might be good at many things, but we will never be perfect at them all. There will always be someone who is better at something than us.
For instance, I thought I was great at gymnastics until I started taking gymnastics classes and I saw how great the other girls were. I could turn a cartwheel, but I could not do a backhand spring no matter how hard I tried. While this doesn't mean I failed at gymnastics, it simply means that I am not the best, and that is okay. In truth, it is more than okay. Trying to always be the best at everything is exhausting.
We don’t need to try to keep up with a status quo that we cannot maintain.
Being the most pretty, most funny, or most smart person in the group will run its course. Someone else will come along who is prettier, funnier, or smarter than us. Instead of allowing this to ruin our self-view, we have to learn ahead of time that we are not defined by being the best at anything. We are defined by Christ alone. Through Him, we have been brought to fullness (Colossians 2:9-10).
Rather than trying to be the “best” or perfect, we need to allow ourselves just to be us. We all have flaws, and that is okay. No longer do we need to hold ourselves to impossible standards. Beauty standards, academic standards, or career standards do not need to control us. We can simply just be us.
When we allow ourselves to just be us, it is very freeing. The Lord died in order for us to have freedom (Galatians 5:1). There is no room in a Christian’s life to be held in bondage to slavery of any kind and this includes being a slave to perfection. The Lord has already set us free, and we need to stand strong in this freedom.
Rather than pursuing perfection or certain standards, we can sit at the feet of Jesus. We can learn from Him and experience His peace. Striving after perfection will steal peace away from our hearts, yet when we turn to Jesus, He gives us abundant peace. The Lord tells us, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid” (John 14:27).
As Jesus says in this passage, He gives us true peace. It is not the same as the world gives. Instead, it is His perfect peace, and He gives it to us abundantly. Never will the Lord withhold His peace and love from our hearts. With this same heart of peace, Jesus can calm our hearts from being troubled or afraid.
Striving after perfection will cause us to become anxious, overwhelmed, and troubled. However, when we look at the Lord, He has already given us peace. With this peace, we can rest in the knowledge that we don’t need to strive after any standard as we are already more than enough because of Jesus.
We are unique amongst God’s creation as we are made in His image (Genesis 1:27). Nothing else in all creation has been made in the image of God, which makes us special to Him. God loves us as His children, and He will help us in any struggles we are experiencing. He is always holding our hand, and He won’t let go.
Psalm 18:30 says, “As for God, his way is perfect: The Lord’s word is flawless; he shields all who take refuge in him.” God’s ways are perfect just as He is perfect. His words are flawless, and He shields all who take refuge in Him. We need to allow these truths to give us comfort.
We are not perfect, and we do not know all things, yet God is perfect and knows all things. With this in our hearts, we can give up the desire to be perfect or “flawless.” God is perfect in every way, and He is guarding each of our steps. Instead of trying to be perfect ourselves, we can rest in God’s perfection. God’s perfection shows us that He is perfect in His faithfulness, love, peace, protection, forgiveness, and promises.
God will never fail us because it is simply impossible. We can fully rely on Him during the present time as well as in the future. All of us need to lay down our armor of striving for perfection because the battle has already been won. God is perfect, and He will keep us fully complete in His love. We all can say goodbye to striving for perfection and start living in the freedom of God’s love.
The world tells us we are never good enough, yet God says we are more than enough. Praise Him for His goodness and deliverance from the prison of perfection that we have caged ourselves inside. We are free in Christ, never to be held in bondage again.
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