Welcome to Day 8 of 31 Simple Ways to Embrace Lopsided Living!
On Saturdays, I’ll be recapping the week’s posts and sharing a overarching principle of Lopsided Living.
We began our journey by recognizing there is a better way to live a fuller life.
From there John 10:10 helped us understand in Christ we have abundance, not scarcity.
We spent five days looking at five truths of Lopsided Living:
Understand how to Live at Rest
Locate & Use Pockets of Time Wisely
Which bring us to today’s overarching principle:
Lopsided Living values progress over perfection.
One of the great struggles of my life is perfectionism. I have this ridiculously high expectation of myself and when I can’t reach it {because, duh, ridiculously high is code for completely unattainable}, I beat myself up. A lot. And I give the committee in my head plenty of leeway to say what they will … and what they usually say isn’t kind or true.
Maybe you know of which I speak? Or maybe you have “a friend” who does?
The apostle Paul was well versed in the ways of legalism and getting it all done. He knew all about high standards and living under the demands of expectations. And then he met Jesus and everything changed.
Read over these verses a couple of times:
Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Philippians 3:12
And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Christ Jesus. Philippians 1:6
How did Paul move from being a perfectionistic Pharisee to writing those words?
He found freedom — the freedom to be in progress, to press on, and to allow God to do the work of transforming him into the image of Christ.
Jesus said, “And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (see John 8:31-38). The truth is, our identity isn’t in who we are but in who He is. And our worth isn’t in what we’ve done but in what He has done and what He will continue to do in us. In Christ, we have the same freedom as Paul found — to be in progress, to trust Him to do the necessary work in us.
Here’s my challenge to you, the simple way I’m inviting you to embrace lopsided living today:
CELEBRATE THE PROGRESS!
I don’t know what that means specifically for you. It could be that you only have three loads of laundry to finish but you’ve got two already done — progress. Or maybe you didn’t have a quiet time every day this week but you did do it a few days — progress. Perhaps you weren’t as patient with your kids as you wanted to be but you did sit with them and play Legos for thirty minutes when you really wanted to do almost anything else — progress.
#LopsidedLiving values progress over perfection! Share on X
Baby steps, y’all, baby steps.
Living lopsided,
Teri Lynne
Yesterday’s post: Listen well.
Tomorrow’s post: We are works in progress {and that’s okay!}.
Index to every post here.
Leave a Reply