When You Feel Like You Don't Measure Up
Your Nightly Prayer for Jan. 2, 2025
by Meg Bucher
TONIGHT’S SCRIPTURE
“When the others heard this, they stopped objecting and began praising God. They said, ‘We can see that God has also given the Gentiles the privilege of repenting of their sins and receiving eternal life.’” – Acts 11:18 NLT
SOMETHING TO PONDER
“Father, help me to reveal my true feelings and motives,” I prayed, “Help me to be kind, quiet, caring, compassionate, patient, affirmative, gentle, assertive, nice, transparent, forthright, humble, careful, direct, flexible …” Over the past year, the Lord has given me a front row seat in character building. It was the only way I knew to cope with the hurt that was happening to me, to ask God to help me see what I needed to work on. And boy, did He ever. It reframed my focus and has truly helped me heal.
Tonight’s verse reminds us that no matter how disqualified we feel, the Gospel includes all of us. It’s easy to feel the ache of knowing where we fall short or believe the ways people say we do. We all feel it; don’t be discouraged. It's actually a healthy component of genuine faith as long as we know how to guide our thoughts and feelings alongside the Truth of God’s Word. Genuine means “possessing the claimed or attributed character, quality, or origin; not counterfeit; authentic; real.” (Dictionary.com)
In my quest for genuine healing and God’s will for putting me here on this planet, I am continually learning exactly how very much I fall short and do what I hate to echo the spiritual giant, Paul. See, he wasn’t a spiritual giant because of how educated and affluent he was …and he was both! No, Paul could lead people to Jesus because he knew how desperately he needed Him. He had his own laundry list of character flaws! I think we get that wrong a TON in Christian circles and church congregations.
Our verse tonight assures us the church is a hospital for damaged people. When this verse was written – Gentiles were shunned. They were not God’s people. For the Gospel to include them was extreme and important. We, too, are the outsiders in God’s story, but we get to be included through faith in Christ Jesus. Our whole, genuinely damaged selves… and we are all damaged. Whether inflicted upon us, having done it to ourselves, or just living in a sin-soaked world- we genuinely need Jesus because we are a hot mess. Understanding, embracing, and allowing the Holy Spirit to minister to our mess is the most genuine faith we could ever possibly have. And allowing others to be their true, genuine mess among us as well. We all have the innate need to be known genuinely. The ESV translation of tonight’s verse reads:
“When they heard these things, they fell silent. And they glorified God, saying, ‘Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.’”
Like a football crowd who thought their team had the game in the bag but lost, we can sit stunned by God’s love for and inclusion of us in His story or redemption. “Repentance includes a change of mind that results in trusting God (that is, having faith),” the ESV Global Study Bible explains, “genuine faith always involves repentance, and vice versa.” It’s not just noticing all the ways we fall short but allowing the Holy Spirit to minister to us. That’s the fertile ground of genuine faith.
YOUR NIGHTLY PRAYER
Father,
Great is Your faithfulness. We are blown away by Your inclusion of us in Your redemptive plan. Put our hearts at ease tonight as we let the natural byproduct of realizing how flawed we are tend to stress us out and make us feel disqualified from Your Love. It’s the opposite, God. The more aware we are of our need for character development, the more we are to run to You. This is Your design. Bless our lives with a spirit of genuine faith, God. A faith that allows us to understand what we lack but also what we gain in Christ. Guide us, Father, in our character development. Teach us about Your genuine love for us.
In Jesus’ Name,
Amen.
THREE THINGS TO MEDITATE UPON
1. What has the Lord convicted your heart of tonight? Name the ways you feel you’ve failed or fallen short, and ask God for forgiveness.
2. What character traits do you need help with? Ask God to reveal them to you and to help you develop them genuinely in your life.
3. Take a moment to allow the full nature of God’s genuine love for you to sink into your soul and comfort your heart. No matter how many character flaws we possess … He is faithful to reveal them to us until we meet Him at home in Heaven! – His love for us never, ever, for a shred of an instant, lacks, fades, or fails. He chooses to see us as He created us. Allow yourself to feel His genuine love.
Photo Credit: ©Getty Images/cyano66
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