Feeling falling short?

The more we think of God and esteem his holiness and righteousness, the more we should be aware of our sinfulness and feel grateful and thankful for his grace and the unconditional aspects of his love. The closer to the light we get, the more obvious is the dirt in our own lives.

If we have difficulty in comprehending that is probably because we often overlook that which we have failed to do and focus only on the things we’ve actually done. Remember the rich young ruler. He’d carefully considered that he had followed all the “thou shalt nots” but then Jesus said, “sell all you have and come follow me” and he did not. That was revealing that he overlooked that sin is not just what bad we avoid doing, it’s also about what good we avoid doing.

During my lifetime, I committed both sins of commission and sins of omission. But truthfully, as I look back, the sins of commission seem rather temporal, even momentary. The sins of omission, –all those years out of fellowship and resisting God’s will for my life–are what now weigh most heavily on my conscience. All that lost time. So much I should have done (through God) but did not do!

So next time we’re in a prayer of confession, let us ask ourselves introspectively, let us consider of ourselves, what we have recently done to love our neighbor, witness our faith, console the sick, help the poor or edify the members of Christ’s Body.

Let’s not just focus on what we have avoided doing wrong, let’s evaluate whether we are doing what’s expected of us.

Let us not measure ourselves against our own unregenerate self, or against the standards of this world, let us measure ourselves against the measure set by Jesus Christ.

And then, as we become aware of falling short, let us not merely thank God for having saved us one day in the past, let us thank God saving us each and every day.

Let us thank God for saving us that very day we’re thanking Him for it. Let us thank God for saving us tomorrow, because we know that even tomorrow we will once again fall short; it’s our old nature. No matter how “mature” we might be in man’s eyes, let us ever be mindful that we still remain and will remain until we are glorified, merely sinners benefiting from unconditional mercy.