This past week I found myself feeling a bit exposed and vulnerable. Personally, I made a resolution a couple years ago to be better. Better at my marriage, better at parenting, better at work – just better.
I want to improve as a person and not continue to make excuses for my flaws or not so helpful habits. I want to be deliberate about changing. When is the last time you read 1 Peter 1:13-16? Look carefully at what it says.
So prepare your minds for action and exercise self-control. Put all your hope in the gracious salvation that will come to you when Jesus Christ is revealed to the world. So you must live as God's obedient children. Don't slip back into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires. You didn't know any better then. But now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy. 16 For the Scriptures say, "You must be holy because I am holy.
Being holy is tough. Slipping back into your old ways is easy, and making excuses for doing so is even easier. Holiness is a lifelong process and it doesn’t have a single meaning. There are many dimensions to holiness – your thought life, your behavior, your body language, your tone and of course, what you say. I knew better – I knew that when I made that resolution, God would begin the molding and the shaping. It’s one thing to read about Him being the potter and us being the clay – it’s another thing to experience it, repeatedly.
So how do you know that holiness is forming in your life? For one, feedback from those you love is one measure. Your spouse will see the changes and often communicate such to you. They’ll also tell you when you’re not so holy. Feedback is perhaps the best thermometer in a marriage. It will help you gauge the temperature of the relationship because, if it’s honest feedback, it will reveal what needs to change.
I got some of that feedback last week. As my wife and I talked about improving communication in our marriage, she gave me feedback that I wasn’t doing too well in a couple areas. It was hard to hear it because, after all, if I love her and am committed to her and to God, then why do those areas still hang around? The truth is, because I let them. Even though she has explained to me over and over that these particular areas need improving, I don’t seem to do anything to improve, or to be better.
This time, however, I realized that this needed to change. It needed to change not only because my wife deserved better from me, but also because I’m not honoring God by allowing these things in my life. To be better doesn’t mean you live by a legalistic code – being robotic so you don’t mess up. It means that when you do make mistakes, you get immediately back on track.
This is why forgiveness is so critical in marriage and in life. We forgive one another’s mistakes and we free the other person to improve, to have the courage to change and not feel beaten down because they failed one more time. My wife is my great encourager and in giving the feedback, she reinforced that these things, while needing to change, weren’t a reflection of our marriage. That was an important point, because sometimes we can take one flaw and drown our marriage in it rather than dealing with it as an isolated issue.
She freed me through that feedback. God used it to help me see things more clearly. He reminded me that my resolution road is paved with small challenges and victories that He uses to chip away at the final product I’ll become one day.
Thank you darling for setting me straight, again.