Confessions of a Perfectionist Undergoing Sanctification

Broken Sacrifices: Why It Isn't About Us 

Recently, coming to God has been so hard. I think it has something to do with my perfectionism—all I can think about is how my prayers aren’t good enough, I need to find the right passage, my focus imperfect. Anxiety grips my heart, leaving time with God feeling burdensome and draining. Last night, I felt the enemy latch onto this insecurity and rip me open with condemnation. You’re not okay before God. You’re not feeling the right things. Your worship doesn’t please Him. I went to bed fighting these lies, fearing I would never measure up. 

But that night, God gave me a strange dream: He opened my body, and I could see inside. All around my heart were rolls of my flesh. They were being unrolled like scrolls. There was one white scroll inside my heart, and as it unrolled I realized it was Jesus, and He said, “I will never change.” I woke up startled. God told me to write it down, pressing the word “roll” upon my heart. As I was listening to worship on YouTube that morning, a sermon entitled, “Acceptable Sacrifices: Why We Don’t Need to be Perfect” caught my eye. The worship pastor at Elevation Church shared about how we come before God believing we need to feel the right emotions or clean ourselves up. Psalm 51 reveals how it isn’t rituals which worship Him but our broken and contrite hearts. The contrite heart is crushed, recognizing its own defeat. The broken heart knows its only hope for healing is Jesus. This is what God values: our honesty about our need for Him and acceptance of His salvation. He doesn’t need perfect prayers, scripture memorization, and church attendance; He wants us to pour our heart before Him—our hopes, disappointments, and longings—and invite Him into our struggles.

When I come before Him, it isn’t uttering the right words and practices which render me clean; it is His blood shed on the cross which allows me to worship freely, my debt being paid. When God forgave sins in the Old Testament, He never examined people to determine if they were sinless enough to make the cut—their sin was assumed, why else would they be making the sacrifice? Rather, He fixed His gaze on the lamb, which better be spotless. Our best efforts are filthy rags compared to His righteousness (Isaiah 64:6). Praise God that He gives us a perfect sacrifice (Jesus) and blameless priest (also Jesus) to advocate on our behalf. Nothing I do makes Him love me more. He would rather have me battered and bruised than to not have me come at all. And that’s not because of any potential I have to offer—it’s because I’m His child whom He created. He promises to relieve the burdens and lift the wearied heads of those who come to Him (Matthew 11:28).

In the dream I had, Jesus (represented by the white scroll) lived in my heart and His righteousness was my final verdict. The rolls of “flesh” (representing sin) were still present around me and unrolling as God addresses them through sanctification. But they didn’t affect the salvation within my heart. Just as Jesus declared in my dream that He never changes, neither does my salvation. His righteousness given to me remains the same, regardless of whatever sin I commit. How silly for me to believe that my little rituals can buy my Father’s love. I am justified because He lives inside my heart—and His dwelling there is more permanent than my acts of worship could ever make me. We spend time with God not to secure His affection but to remind us of the love that is already in place.

My Bible flipped open to Joshua 5, a passage I had never read before. In this passage, God circumcises the Israelites prior to them entering Jericho. He tells them, “Today I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you.” They call this place Gilgal, which sounds like “roll” in Hebrew. Immediately, God reminded me of the “roll” dream I'd had that night. In Hebrew, reproach means “shame, dishonor, taunt, scorn” that the enemy assails followers of God with. I felt God tell me that He was rolling away my reproach. Though Israel had been freed from Egypt over 40 years ago, only now was God finally finished rolling away their reproach. Though freedom might come in an instant, feeling the effects of that freedom can take years. My pastor likes to say that though God took Israel out of Egypt in a day, it would take much longer to take Egypt out of Israel. When the practices of slavery become engrained in us, it takes continued reliance on and patience with God as He removes the aftermath of oppression from our hearts. Instead of focusing on achieving perfection through self-righteous deeds, we can lean His way by trusting in the promise that He will finish the work to completion (Phil 1:6).

And though Jesus justifies us immediately when we ask Him into our lives, sanctification (the process of the Holy Spirit making us more like Him) takes a lifetime. While the Holy Spirit does the work in us, we do our part by giving Him permission to repair our brokenness. Salvation is recognizing that our house is in shambles and letting the repairman in, giving Jesus entrance and inviting Him to begin His work. While we might invite Jesus into the foyer, there are still rooms of dirty laundry that we keep off-limits. But as He breaks down pride and removes shame, He’s granted permission into each room, healing us from fear, anger, and lust. He opens our eyes to broken pipes we weren’t even aware of as His Holy Spirit works in every cranny of our lives. I can’t fix those pipes or the sin struggles in my life. But I can unlock the door by trusting in His perfect sacrifice to cover my sin and surrendering each struggle to Him. Every time I’ve overcome my sin it hasn’t come as a result of learning some technique or adopting an improved philosophy—it started with me admitting my weakness and begging Jesus to help. After that, I'm able to become more aware of His Holy Spirit and obey with baby steps day-by-day. Learning to replace the lies I’ve believed at the core of my sin with His truth by digging into and memorizing the Word. And repeating this process every day.

Our struggle doesn’t have the final say—Jesus seized that right away on the cross. But just as it took the Israelites time to heal at Gilgal from their circumcision, it takes time for us to heal when the Holy Spirit circumcises our hearts in surgical sanctification. It’s like hiring an exterminator to rid your house of cockroaches—he might exterminate them in an instant, but it takes time to clean them out. It would be gross watching him remove them but you don’t have to fear, these insects have no power once they’re dead. Though it would be momentarily gross, you could trust that the exterminator was in the process of cleaning and that he’d eventually reach this room. Our sin is like that—Jesus removed its power on the cross (Colossians 2:15), but sanctification is messy. For the present being, struggles and temptations appear like menacing beasts, threatening to rip me apart. Yet when I look at my past, the sin God freed me from is only empty carcasses, powerless exoskeletons. He has the power to turn our beasts into shells of victory, and He promises He will.

After God “rolls” away Israel’s reproach, they stand on the banks of Jericho, their new battle, and rejoice, eating manna for the last time. Next time, they’ll eat the harvest of their enemies. Though it might not be until we stand in the face of a new struggle that we taste freedom from the last, the same God who rescued us from our enemy will save us again. Not only that, but, just as Jericho's produce became the means by which Israel was fed, it could be that the very obstacle we consider standing in our way will become the provision God uses to someday bless us.