Perseverance that leads to Progress

For those who don't really know me, I love my job.  I am in marketing, which means two things:

1. I make things look pretty and 
2. I make them sound good.  

That's it in a nutshell.  And God is so good that He gave me a job that fits my personality so perfectly.  He gifted me with a natural tendency to do both of those things in everything that I did in school, my jobs and my whole life.

But did you know that any gift that is unredeemed by God can turn to something negative in a heartbeat?  So when it comes to faith, those of us bent toward creativity and making things look pretty, can easily turn into a performance-based person where completing the checklists and having the outward appearance of being "good" become more important than building a relationship with the lover of our soul.  We become human do-ings rather than human beings.  We focus on the outward things just like the pharisees and we forget that the whole purpose of doing anything in our faith should be the sole result of getting to know the God who created us and wants to spend time with us.  

From a marketing perspective there have been four P's that orchestrate the activities in my everyday life - product, place, promotion and pricing.  They set the stage for every activity in my daily life.  So as I contemplated this whole idea of my unredeemed idea of perfomance and perfection, God began to change the P's to phrases that would help alter my expectations and redeem my identity into what He desires for me. 

Perseverance NOT Performance.  Progress NOT perfection. 

The place this usually shows up so brightly in my life is in a yearly Bible reading plan.  I start the year off with gusto.  I get caught up in making sure that I have all the passages checked (for the first month or so) that I would be reading just to get them read, and not reading to actually learn anything about God or hearing anything He really wanted to speak.  Then somewhere along the way, I would miss a day or two and then I would feel like a failure and would no longer want to continue with the full plan, so I would give up.  There would be grace for anyone else doing the same thing and I would tell them to just start the next day, but in my own life, I would condemn myself and just quit.  I would find other reading plans, or just pick something to read that day and the perfectionism would turn into condemnation and self loathing.  I should know better, I should just start fresh, I should I should I should. 

But I wouldn't. 

And the worst part of any of this is that NO ONE was checking my progress.  No one was going to see that I missed a day, or that I didn't read all 4 chapters that day.  It was only the small voice in my head that was pushing and driving me further from the truth rather than me listening to what God has to say and running towards Him.  How foolish!

So now as I entered into 2015, I started a new plan and a new discipleship program too.  And I could easily get caught up in that trap, but I am learning that as I do things for my job, my family and the Kingdom, I need to view them through those 2 statements. 

Perseverance NOT Performance, and Progress NOT perfection.  

I am asking God for wisdom to help me change my perspective so that I don't try to just do the right things, but that I do everything with the frame of mind of learning more about the Lord, finding out what He wants me to do and meditating on His word rather than spending my time ensuring that the i's are dotted, the t's are crossed and the boxes next to the checklist are filled in so that in case anyone checks, I can say, I am good. 

Since I cannot earn my way into Heaven, how silly is it that I think I could possibly be good enough to make Him happy.  Perfection is no longer my goal.  Performance is no longer my mindset.  I am now striving for discipleship that is rooted in Perseverance that leads to Progress!