Overcoming Perfectionism as a Christian

[00:00:00] Have you ever wondered why we chase so hard after perfectionism?

[00:00:04] I asked myself that question all the time as an artist, as somebody who has spent his whole life creating things.

[00:00:12] Constantly asking, why do you have to be such a perfectionist about everything?

[00:00:18] Like what is it? Is it some deep-seated desire for control? Or is it this deep yearning for approval from other people?

[00:00:26] If I can just make this perfect enough, then people will love me.

[00:00:32] I've spoken to a lot of young people that struggle with perfectionism, that relentless

[00:00:39] taskmaster that is constantly whispering in our ear, just a little better, just a little more,

[00:00:47] and then you'll be enough. We spend our lives straining and stretching,

[00:00:52] contorting and conforming to what we think other people want, but no matter how high we leap,

[00:00:59] it seems like perfection is just that ledge that is just constantly out of reach.

[00:01:03] It's like this distant horizon that's just constantly moving away as we're trying to move

[00:01:09] towards it, and that can be so ridiculously frustrating. We give and give and give what we feel is

[00:01:17] best, pouring our heart and soul into this relentless pursuit of being perfect.

[00:01:26] And yet we always fail to live up to our standards. In the standards we feel other people

[00:01:34] have placed on us. The ideal that we're after is always just like one step beyond our reach.

[00:01:41] And this problem has woven itself into the very fabric of the modern psyche. Like it's in

[00:01:48] the air we breathe, social media just breeds this constant comparison between us and others.

[00:01:55] And no matter how good you are at social media, there's always somebody better,

[00:01:59] somebody with a more curated feed, and just a more polished presentation of their life.

[00:02:06] And as we're looking at that, this pressure to be perfect and be flawless. It intensifies

[00:02:12] because we're looking at others going, they seem to have it figured out, they seem to have their

[00:02:16] life together. What's wrong with me? On a psychological level, it really impacts us in a deep,

[00:02:23] deep way. It's a breeding ground for anxiety and this constant feeling of always falling short

[00:02:30] and missing the mark. For a lot of people it can even fuel depression, this feeling of like,

[00:02:35] I will never be enough. No matter what I do, I will never be enough. I think a lot of us live

[00:02:42] under these crushing expectations. Expectations from culture, expectations from society,

[00:02:51] expectations from our family or our parents. And even expectations we have placed on our self,

[00:02:59] hopes and dreams and things we always wanted for ourselves. And we look in the mirror and we go,

[00:03:06] that stuff has not happened yet. Those dreams have not come true yet. I must be the problem. I am

[00:03:13] fundamentally broken. And I will never be who I want to be. And again, social media and media in

[00:03:21] general creates this broken mirror reality where we look at ourselves and we think, you know,

[00:03:29] anything less than perfect is unacceptable. It's so easy to internalize that idea and just

[00:03:35] let your inner critic out to wreak havoc in your life. And I'm just, I have been there,

[00:03:42] I'm sure you've been there. And when this storm hits one of the first things we throw overboard

[00:03:48] is joy in the quest for perfectionism and then the constant barrage, the winds and waves crashing

[00:03:56] of the feelings of I will not live up to that perfect ideal. We toss joy overboard because we think

[00:04:04] I don't have time for joy right now. I don't have time to celebrate the small victories in my life

[00:04:10] because I'm constantly failing at the big ideas of what I think my life should be. We lose sight

[00:04:17] of our inherent intrinsic value. The irony, the great irony of this is that perfectionism in its

[00:04:26] quest to make us better very often like nine times out of ten makes us worse. It makes us

[00:04:35] feel worse and not only feel worse, it just, it makes us become and be a worse version of our

[00:04:41] self. In our modern world, we are just surrounded by images of success and wealth and beauty

[00:04:48] and achievement, the constant stream of this stuff. It's so relentless and it's so just everywhere

[00:04:56] you look that we don't even have time to stop and process and realize that a lot of times these images

[00:05:01] are in illusion. They are airbrushed and filtered to hide imperfections and in reality,

[00:05:08] people only want to present their light, not their darkness, their success, not their failure.

[00:05:16] It's so easy to struggle and think I'm the only one. No one else is going through this. It's just

[00:05:22] me my situation is so uniquely terrible when we don't realize that there are so many out there

[00:05:30] who seem like they have it together, but they are going through hard things behind the scenes.

[00:05:36] And that's in reality that's us how many times have we posted some amazing thing going on

[00:05:41] in our life? But we can look back on that post and remember oh yeah during that time when I posted

[00:05:48] that I was going through some really heavy heart things behind the scenes. That's everybody.

[00:05:52] When we're constantly comparing our mess to other people's polished, presented, curated version

[00:06:01] of what they want everyone to think their life is, it leads to this pursuit of perfectionism that

[00:06:08] results in anxiety and depression and us being disconnected from our true selves. I think the

[00:06:15] possible Paul is actually really helpful for us in looking at how to deal with this problem

[00:06:22] of perfectionism because Paul struggled with this himself. Paul wrote like half the Bible and yet

[00:06:29] he's so human, like he's so real despite all his contributions to the Christian faith.

[00:06:36] Paul wrestled with his own inner demons constantly. In first Timothy chapter one,

[00:06:41] he writes to his apprentice Timothy and says, hey man, I am the chief of sinners. Like I am the

[00:06:47] worst of the worst. I am horrible. By today's standards Paul would have been considered a Christian

[00:06:53] celebrity. He would be the guy getting invited to speak it all the conferences and yet Paul

[00:06:58] refers to himself as like I am just utter trash. And I'm sure a lot of that had to do with just

[00:07:05] internalized guilt over the sins of his past and Paul had a lot of sins in his past. This was

[00:07:11] a guy who at one time was actually hunting down Christians in order to put them on trial and

[00:07:17] execute them because as a Jewish Pharisee he viewed Christians as basically a part of a cult.

[00:07:24] And then you all know the story, he finds Jesus and repents and becomes this amazing

[00:07:30] catalyst for the gospel reaching the entire Gentile world. In Paul's mind he's like, I can never

[00:07:36] perfect because I am horribly flawed. My past is horribly flawed and then even Paul admits his present

[00:07:45] is flawed. In Romans 7 verse 19 he says, I do not do the good things that I want to do,

[00:07:53] but the evil that I do not want is what I keep on doing. I mean how relatable is that? That's

[00:08:04] eternal battle between our ideals and our reality. Perfectionism is a huge battle for the Christian

[00:08:10] because we all know the ideal, it's Jesus. We all know where's called to imitate him and be like

[00:08:18] him and follow him. And yet we look in the mirror and we're like I don't see him. I see a loser

[00:08:24] and a failure and a sinner and somebody who will never measure up. And that's why understanding

[00:08:30] this context makes a lot of what Paul writes so powerful for us because Paul did not find his piece

[00:08:40] in perfectionism. He did not find his piece in doing more trying harder, trying to attain some

[00:08:48] level of perfectness. No, here's what he says. Second Corinthians 129 he says that this is a message

[00:08:55] he got from Jesus himself. He writes, but Jesus said to me, my grace is sufficient for you.

[00:09:05] For my power is made perfect in weakness. How good is that? Do you hear that? Do you

[00:09:12] receive that? My grace is sufficient for you because my power, Jesus's power, is made perfect

[00:09:23] in weakness. That's that's Jesus speaking to us, to Christians. I think this is so it's so

[00:09:30] stinking beautiful. Paul's struggle with this very thing that we all struggle with shows us that

[00:09:41] follow the perfect one, which we cannot do perfectly and never will do perfectly. But man,

[00:09:47] I feel like I just saw so many young people when I was a youth pastor really struggle with this

[00:09:54] because they knew they were not perfect. Internally they knew it and then they were being told by

[00:09:59] their teachers and their parents and people in their life like, hey you are screwed up, you're messed up,

[00:10:05] you're flawed. And I watched a lot of people feel crushed under this burden of I will never be

[00:10:11] the perfect Christian. So why even try? Yes, I'm a Christian. Yes, I know I'm going to heaven

[00:10:17] when I die, but to actually walk with Christ and to follow Him and to strive to have a life that

[00:10:24] is in line with the guidance of the Holy Spirit and all this stuff. It's like, I can't, I can't do

[00:10:31] that so I'm out. Like I'll see you in heaven, Jesus, but for right now I just got to focus on what's

[00:10:35] in front of me and live my life. And I think we all struggle with the temptation to slip into that.

[00:10:41] Myself included, there's so many times where I just want to check out and just I just want to work.

[00:10:46] For a ride from my family, watch TV, go to bed and not actively try to follow God's plan

[00:10:53] and leading for my life because it's hard and I feel this is just me being vulnerable. I constantly

[00:10:58] feel like God's plan for my life and what He's calling me to do is really, really hard at times

[00:11:04] and difficult and not easy, not fun, not comfortable. So my temptation very often is to just check out.

[00:11:12] And I'm being honest because maybe that's you too. Maybe that's you. I love the impulse journey.

[00:11:17] We find hope for our own struggle because the reminder is falling short and messing up does not

[00:11:25] disqualifies or exclude us from God's love and for His plan for our life to walk with Him

[00:11:35] and to grow in Him and to serve Him and to find joy and identity and peace and fulfillment in Him.

[00:11:44] Even in our imperfection, we are profoundly embraced by a gracious father who loves us. I'm going to

[00:11:54] child on a beach building a sand castle and he's gathering the wet sand and he's carefully

[00:12:01] molding the turrets and the towers and each grain of sand is placed with precision and it

[00:12:09] represents his effort but then the tide comes in and wave after wave the ocean just relentlessly

[00:12:19] approaches this sand castle that he's worked so hard on. So then the child is like, oh my gosh

[00:12:26] the water is coming, what do I do? So he starts working faster and more frantically because he believes

[00:12:33] that if he builds the sand castle high enough and strong enough then the waves will not be able to

[00:12:40] destroy it but as you can probably guess the sea is indifferent to his striving and you can probably

[00:12:47] guess what happens the waves crashing and destroy the walls of the castle and sweep it all the way.

[00:12:56] And so the little boy is just devastated like he sees his work, what he's toiled for

[00:13:03] and worked hard for and slaved over he watches it all crumble in front of his eyes and he feels

[00:13:09] like a failure all of his work washed away in a single moment and he's just sitting there

[00:13:17] in the water to press, discouraged, wanting to cry and then what happens? His father comes and

[00:13:25] sits next to him and the father doesn't scold him for the fallen crumbled castle instead the

[00:13:33] father smiles and grabs a shovel and another shovel and hands one to his son and says hey let's build

[00:13:39] and together they begin to work and build something new and the presence of the father shifts

[00:13:48] something in the mind of the child, the experience becomes less about building the perfect sand castle

[00:13:56] and more about the beauty and the joy and the wonder of building something together father and

[00:14:04] son and in this I think we see a deep truth Solomon wrote once life is but a vapor it's smoke

[00:14:13] it's like chasing after the wind our sand castles are earthly endeavors the things we try to build

[00:14:21] and work for eventually crumbled always they rise and they fall I know this very personally I have

[00:14:31] spent my whole life as an artist as a creator as a minister building things and then watching them

[00:14:40] fade away and fall apart and not go the direction I hoped and not grow the way I wanted them to

[00:14:47] or sometimes they're taken away and given to someone else and this in reality it's nothing new what I'm

[00:14:52] describing you've all experienced that this is life the reality is all the things we build on earth

[00:14:59] all these sand castles the waves will still come the ocean cannot be stopped time cannot be stopped

[00:15:07] your own human nature and failure cannot be stopped no matter how many times you succeed you will

[00:15:15] always fail in some way and so the ocean will continue to crash over those sand castles and erode them

[00:15:22] into nothing and yet so often what we miss is in the process of the building when we do not try

[00:15:30] to build these things alone but when we build these sand castles side by side with the father

[00:15:38] it's not about the sand castles it is about the invisible kingdom of God behind the scenes

[00:15:45] that is being built that is truly what we'll last for every earthly sand castle we build that is

[00:15:53] destroyed there is seeds being planted in the garden of the kingdom there is structure and

[00:15:59] foundation being laid in the kingdom of God and this is the true work it is the kingdom that is

[00:16:07] among us it is the kingdom that is already but not yet and we get a taste of it here but one day

[00:16:14] it'll finally arrive and we'll see what all of the work we do was about we'll see the fruit of

[00:16:22] everything we did here in this life even if often it feels like it was worthless or it was

[00:16:29] pointless because it didn't work out the way that we wanted it to God says that doesn't matter

[00:16:34] the kingdom is coming and when it arrives you her mind will be blown at what we were building

[00:16:40] together and you just couldn't see it yet and even beyond that there is another work that is

[00:16:47] happening in the building process which is the inner work that is being done in the kingdom of God

[00:16:53] within you in every moment that we spend with the father building it doesn't matter if the

[00:17:02] waves of time or failure or culture or whatever wash away our work because there is a permanent

[00:17:10] eternal building project that is happening within our very hearts and souls we cannot see it

[00:17:18] right now but one day we will and it's going to below our minds I hope this has been encouraging

[00:17:25] I just want to remind you if you struggle with perfectionism if you struggle with feeling like

[00:17:30] not enough if you struggle with feeling like the work that you do will never amount to anything

[00:17:37] and if you're constantly comparing yourself to others or even a more idealized version of

[00:17:42] yourself of who you want to be but feel you can never be. If you feel like that kid that is just

[00:17:47] constantly scrambling to save the sand castle less it be washed away I just want to encourage

[00:17:54] in the moments that you think your sand castle is crumbling he is building something eternal

[00:18:01] that cannot be taken away that will last forever something the tides can never touch in your imperfection

[00:18:10] his perfect love is crafting you and everything you touch into a masterpiece hold on to that hope

[00:18:19] don't waste your life trying to be perfect instead follow the perfect one thanks for watching