How to Achieve Perfection

I couldn’t believe my eyes. I spent hours preparing the house to be shown to a potential buyer. When I returned home after the showing, there it was. The Swiffer mop sitting outside the master bathroom door. How did I miss that? I told myself I would scour the house before I left the next time to make sure it was perfect.

But after another showing, we realized we missed a sock in the bathtub.

The next time, a piece of a dog toy in the family room.

Yesterday, two of my husband’s socks were left at the end of the bed.

I try hard to make the house perfect, but there’s always some little imperfection.

It is frustrating.

We can drive ourselves crazy trying to reach perfection, can’t we? But I believe God allows us to fall short in our quest for perfection in order to remind us he is perfect and we are not.

God’s Holy Book is full of imperfect people the Lord used for his purpose.

Moses was a murderer.

Rahab was a harlot.

Paul talked about a “thorn in his flesh,” possibly some kind of physical illness he had to cope with while doing ministry.

All far from perfect.

But God offers us an exchange.

Our weakness for his strength.

Our imperfection for his perfection.

In 2 Corinthians 12 the Apostle Paul realized that God loves to work through imperfection because his strength shines through our shortcomings. Paul, tired of the thorn of imperfection piercing him, asked the Lord three times to remove it but he was told, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Paul, who perhaps embraced his humanity, went on to say that he delights in his weaknesses for when he is weak, God is strong.

Do you feel far from perfect?

Do you need God’s strength today?

I have found the greatest witnesses of the faith are those who do not allow a thorn in the flesh to bring them down.

I think of the little boy I met, born without vocal chords, who was told he would never talk. Now he never stops talking.

God’s strength shines through his weakness.

Or my mother-in-law, riddled with cancer, yet still had a positive attitude and continued to serve others until she took her last breath.

God’s strength shined through her weakness.

Or my friend, Susie, who after her husband’s suicide, responded to a call of God to minister to thousands of homeless people in Dallas.

God’s strength shines through her weakness.

Where are you imperfect?

God wants us to stop striving and lay our weaknesses at his feet.

He wants us to realize we will never attain any level of perfection without giving all of our shortcomings over to him.

Because he alone is perfect.

And it’s his perfection he wants others to see in us.

And when we allow that,

We will finally reach what we long for.

Perfection.