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August 21, 2006

Good Enough

Your love makes me forget who I've been
Your love makes me see who I really am- "I Need You to Love Me," Barlow Girl

I got baptized yesterday. When I was little I was hurt by the fact that my mom didn't baptize me as a baby, as she did Guy. I thought it was just anther example of getting the short end of the second-kid stick. (i.e. Like the fact that I have no real baby book.) She tried to explain that she chose not to because she wanted it to be my decision - something I did on my own. This was pretty traumatic when I was in junior high and a friend told me I was going to hell because I'd never been baptized. I knew that couldn't be true, as my salvation was real to me even then.

But in my "reawakening," if you want to call it that, I've learned that salvation isn't contingent on baptism. It's the other way around. Baptism is simply a public way of announcing that I've made the decision to, as Carrie Underwood says, let Jesus take the wheel. It's a way to unite myself with generations of believers and come up clean out of that water, belonging only to Him.

Wonderful Savior, my heart belongs to thee
I will remember, always, the blood you shed for me
- "Knees to the Earth," Watermark

North Point Ministries does baptism a little differently. You go in a week earlier and videotape your testimony, rather doing it live. I taped mine last Sunday and it was surreal, to say the least. First, I've never been mic'ed in front of an actual camera with lights and the works. I told my little story, doing my best to keep in short and uncomplicated (when it is neither), and tried to not feel too much like a liar.

I think there is this misconception that committing yourself to something and believing 100 percent in your gut is somehow enough. As if I had those two things alone, they would be enough to ensure clean living and a happy heart. And maybe it is for you, but I doubt it. Buckhead Church has this saying that it's a gathering for all kinds of people, save one. Perfect people aren't allowed. It's an oft-repeated ice breaker, but it's also a reminder that salvation doesn't bring perfection and when we expect it to, we'll only end up hurting.

I'm definitely different now, that is for certain, but I still struggle daily to be the kind of person I should be and can be. It's not enough that I believe or that I have clear convictions about right from wrong. No one exists in a vacuum. It's because of those reasons that I have found myself spending more and more time with my "church friends" - sitting at coffee shops till wee hours of the morning talking and talking and talking; planning movie nights and cooking dinners. I used to be the kind of girl who wanted to go out dancing, drinking, whirlwinding, flirting. Those things don't hold my interest as much anymore, or when they do catch my eye, I usually end up with a guilt hangover.

I'm still capable of some very bad behavior, this I assure you, but the difference now, I guess, is that I'm not satisfied with sitting in sin anymore. It's not what I want for my life: the easy way out, the quick fix, whatever other cliché you want to toss out.

Yesterday Andy began a series called "Everybody," and he broke down, verse by verse, Romans 3:21-26, where Paul clearly lays out the new relationship with God that Jesus' life and death created. It's fairly famous scripture - all fall short of the glory of God but all who believe are made right with God through God's justice. The Just became the Justifier.

I think every person, everybody, wants to live a good life. They desire to be good people and treat people fairly and do right by others and themselves. And while it's an age-old conversation - the spectrum of sin and good versus evil - something flawed can never attain perfection. A broken glass, even one with the smallest chip, is as flawed as the shattered cup. Sometimes I feel like the worst of the worst. Maybe only right ahead of Castro and people who park in undesignated parking spaces and make it almost impossible to get out of the deck. Sometimes I am in awe of the poor decisions I make and they cause me to wonder: if I really believed, if I am really saved, would I still have these thoughts? Would I still do these things? And the answer is yes; it has to be yes.

Trying to be good isn't enough. We aren't good enough - we will never be good enough and no matter how hard I try to walk the narrow path, sometimes I am going to fall down. Sometimes I will trip and fall and while it is sometimes easier to stay down - I have stayed in the dirt plenty in my life - His love gives me the power, the ability, to stand up and brush myself off. But sometimes I still wonder - how many times do I have to get back up? Shouldn't this be easier?

The journey is long, the road is hard, but He has gone before me and He helps me carry on. I can't do this alone. I can't do it without Him. I'm not good enough. I will never be good enough. But He is. He is enough to carry me when I just can't carry on.

Without Him I am broken; I have fallen short. And when I come to him, contrite and guilty, He is the father who will never, ever stop loving me. No matter how great my sin. No matter how far up the spectrum my evil thoughts aspire. To realize that, to learn it, is a gift and a lifesaving message. It's something I want everyone to know. I tried to go it alone. I am a smart, strong, stubborn, iron-willed person. And even yet, even yet, I was never enough on my own. I couldn't do it by myself. I couldn't do anything. I had no answers. No plan. No understanding of how life was even livable, sometimes.

He is enough. Thank God.

Posted by hannah at 05:13 PM