The Good, Bad and Ugly
Aug 29, 2022Yesterday, we did a giveaway of Bob Goff’s new book, Love Does. I love giving stuff away, and you can enter to win through tomorrow. Unexpectedly, God really spoke to my heart through one of the comments on the post. Here is part of the comment:
Thanks for your blog. Your story and being willing to share it, the good, the bad and the ugly, has been most helpful in our journey. Some day God will allow us to share ours as well and hopefully all the mess will bring some good. Blessings to your family from the other side of the world.
I spent so many years of my life convinced that the “Christian” story was all good. If you were a true follower of Jesus, there was no “bad” and there was no “ugly”. I worked so hard to hide the bad. I spent so much energy pretending there was no ugly. Lots of fake conversations. Lots of lying to myself and others. Lots of saying one thing while really feeling or experiencing something else.
It wasn’t malicious or intentionally sinful…it is what I thought the Christian life was. Show everyone how spiritual you are and hide everything bad and ugly. There were safe sins to share; safe struggles to admit to, but it was a false authenticity. It was exhausting.
When did we as Christians convince ourselves that we had to hide the bad and ugly? As I look through Scripture there is more bad and ugly at times than there is good.
Murder, adultery, lying, incest, family dysfunction, pride, envy, lust…the list goes on and on in the Bible and these were the sins of people God used in the most powerful ways. Jacob. Moses. David. Samson. Peter. Paul. Lots of bad and lots of ugly. But lots of redemption. Lots of grace. Lots of God.
I’m not saying we should share our sin and in an effort to disregard it. I’m not saying we should share our sin to glorify it.
I’m saying that God can’t redeem what we pretend isn’t broken.
When we share the bad and the ugly, we allow God to do what only He can do in our heart and life: heal and make us whole.
You can’t redeem yourself. No matter how much you hide. No matter how much you pretend. The life you’re looking for is the life God offers as we become broken, honest and transparent. It is as we share the good the bad and the ugly that we experience God’s amazing grace and allow our lives to be used as a trophy of redemption.
It then becomes all about how great God is in us, and less about how great we look to God.
