There is a gap between where we are (the real) and where we want to be (the ideal) which creates tension.

We must accept this gap, and the tension we feel, as we move towards becoming the person Jesus teaches us to be.

We live towards the ideal Jesus teaches without condemning those who fall short of the ideal including ourselves. We live towards the ideal while completely aware of and accepting our humanness to never be able to reach His ideal.

As we trust more and more in God, we move closer and closer to His ideal. (We bring heaven to earth.)

What does trust look like? How do we trust more? We practice believing. We do the best we can and realize that we will not always get it right and that is okay. When we mess up, we apologize, make amends, pick ourselves up and keep going. We believe that God loves us through all of it. We believe that He is helping us do our best. We rely on the power of the Holy Spirit in us helping us. We seek to know God. We fall more and more in love with God as we read His word, spend time with Him, and allow His shalom to penetrate deep in our hearts.

As Christians, we carry the tension of the ideal and the real. We accept our humanness to never reach the ideal and at the same time we trust God to work in us to continue transforming us towards the ideal.

We must do our work to become the best versions of ourselves we can be. We must work towards God’s ideal regardless of what anyone else does. We are only responsible for ourselves and what we do and how we show up. When we stand before God one day we will only give an account of our life, not someone else’s.

We are not responsible for what anyone else does or how they show up or the words they say or the choices they make. And we should not judge them for any of those things. They are their own person, responsible for themselves, and they can make their own decisions. Who are we to think that we know what is best for them. Sometimes we struggle to know what is best for ourselves. If we focus on being our best self, on loving God and others well, we won’t have time to worry about or judge what others are doing.

We are only responsible for ourselves because the only person we can control or change is ourself.

Jesus does not condemn us for our mistakes. We usually condemn ourselves. We must be willing to forgive ourselves. We must accept our brokenness, our humanness, our need for a Savior.

We decide to tell ourselves a new story about us not because of anything we do but because of God’s love for us.

God forgives us. God accepts us. God is not condemning us. We must stop and receive His grace and mercy.

Jesus pointed and taught towards the ideal, but He did not condemn those who fell short. We must come to realize that we will never meet the ideal.

God does not want us to let go and lose sight of the ideal considering what is real. He wants us to live in the tension between the ideal and the real with the satisfaction that God’s grace is sufficient for us wherever we are in the midst of it. He does not want us to lose sight of either side of the equation.  

In his Future Family Series, Andy Stanley said, “Are we willing to embrace a standard that some of us have fallen short of or will fall short of, and deal with the grief and the pain and the regret that goes along with that, knowing that God’s grace for you is so broad and so wide and so deep that you will never exhaust the riches of His grace towards you or will we opt to change the rules?”

We want to live in to the ideal. We realize our human tendency to get it wrong. We live in this tension of what we experience and the ideal we want to obtain.

Andy Stanley also said, “We must be ministers and ambassadors of the grace of God to people who will never be able to live out the ideal just like most of us won’t be able to but at the same time keep our eye on and point people toward this ideal.”

I am practicing believing that God can do more than I can imagine. Practicing being open to what I cannot comprehend could happen, but that God could do. I am practicing believing and trusting that God wants good for me, and for you, and for all people.

We live in this tension and we have the power to choose what we make it all mean. We decide for ourselves by how we think about all of it. Someone else does not decide for us.

We live in this tension, and we choose to trust God.

No matter where you are in the tension, if you are close to or far from the ideal, no matter what you did or someone else did to you… today is a new day and your past does not define you. Change is possible. You are loved. Your worth and value are in Jesus Christ. You are enough. You are the co-author, with God, of your unfolding story. Your story is good. You choose. You have power.

Choose to live your one life well. Whatever and however that looks for you as you trust God and follow His leading in this beautiful messy world where there is tension between the ideal and the real.

Keep seeking and believing and practicing and becoming and practicing and discovering!

It is an on-going process, and the effort is so worth it!