Grace For the "Good" Girl: A Word From Galatians

If you're like me, you grew up with the expectation of perfection rather than with grace for your imperfections. This mindset, while perhaps instilled in us with good intentions, can be exploited by the devil.

"Good girl" syndrome may leave you feeling like you're never good enough.

In your hopelessness, you may stop trying altogether. You may pull away from God, thinking you're a constant disappointment to Him or that you'll never measure up. Maybe reading your Bible makes you feel bad about yourself, because you know you don't follow all the rules. And when you're a perfectionist, the last thing you want to do (or are equipped to do) is accept the parts of you that feel impossible to perfect. Hi, I'm raising my hand.

On the flip side, maybe you seek to please so much that you exhaust yourself with trying to fulfill the Law of God. This exhaustion leads to anger and resentment towards the Lord. You may feel like you were set up to fail. You may question why it has to be this hard. And yet, you don't give up. You live in internal war. Your striving drives a wedge between you and God, which only makes you feel guiltier because you love Him and you do want to do what is right. You want to be a "good girl." But you never learned how to have grace for yourself. You never learned about God's grace for you. Hi, I'm right there with you.

The enemy has many tactics with one goal--to separate us from God. Our wounds, traumas, personal perspectives, mental states, and desires can all be exploited to do just that.

I've recently come to realize that my lack of grace for myself is enabling the enemy to keep me shackled in shame. It's allowing him to exhaust me, torment me, and turn my frustrations toward God as I try to grow closer to Him. So, let's confront the lie with the truth.

• Grace is a gift God gives us because He loves us. It's not something we earn. If you've been told that you have to earn God's love and His grace, His Word and His character have been misrepresented.

• The Law of the Lord (10 Commandments, other rules and statutes throughout the Bible) was never designed to be fulfilled by man. In fact, these rules were designed to be so impossible for us to follow that they would reveal our innate imperfection, our weakness, our inability, and our desperate need for a Savior.

• The Law God gave us prior to Jesus' coming was also a tutor in righteous living. It showed us the way, but it didn't equip us to walk in the way of the Lord. Only the Holy Spirit can do that and even that is a life-long process.

• Jesus is not just the only man to ever fulfill the law, He was the only man who ever could.

• Jesus was not a back-up plan for mankind's salvation. He was not an afterthought and neither are we. Jesus, the Seed who redeems, was always part of God's plan. He was promised shortly after man's fall from grace and it is through Jesus that grace is restored to us.

• The blood of Jesus makes those who accept Him as Savior clean and blameless in the sight of God. We are righteous in the Lord's eyes not because of us, but because of Him. It is through the Holy Spirit that we are equipped to actually walk a righteous life. Yet, the war of the Spirit and the flesh persists. We will never be perfect, but we will always be His.

"...a man is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ...for by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified." Galatians 2:16

"I do not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain." Galatians 2:21

• Do not stress about what you can do to earn what is priceless. Give thanks for what has been done for you through love. Accept was has been given to you--grace.

• The devil loves to torment us with shame and the need to be perfect because those are the two biggest things Jesus sacrificed Himself to rid us of.

• The enemy wants us focused on trying to be good enough so we don't realize Christ already said we are. We are good enough to love, good enough to die for, good enough to be His, good enough to speak His truth.

• If we cast aside the truth of what Jesus did for us, because we feel we don't deserve it, then we cast aside the freedom that comes with His sacrifice. We don't fully accept the love God has for us. We remain in the bondage of shame and perfectionism.

"Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law...that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith." Galatians 3:13-14

• Even the Bible notes the law as a curse, for no one can walk fully in the Law of the Lord. Man is incapable.

"And this I say, that the law, which was four hundred and thirty years later, cannot annul the covenant that was confirmed before by God in Christ, that it should make the promise of no effect. For if the inheritance is of the law, it is no longer of promise..." Galatians 3:17-18

• God promised an abundant life and eternal life to those who believe in Him and accept His Son, Jesus, as Savior not because of who we are or what we do, but because of who He is.

• The promise came before the law.

"What purpose then does the law serve? It was added because of transgressions, till the Seed should come to whom the promise was made..." Galatians 3:19

"But before faith came, we were kept under guard by the law, kept for the faith which would afterward be revealed. Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor." Galatians 3:23-25

• The law was a guide before the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is our guide now.

• Jesus describes the Holy Spirit as a helper who will teach us more than He had earthly time for.

• The Holy Spirit purifies us from the inside out. It's not an instant process but one that happens over time. This is something I've recently come to realize. The fruits of the Spirit are cultivated in us over time--not all at once.

• Being saved doesn't equal immediate purity, perfection, or righteousness here on earth. It means you're saved and you're in process. The process of walking in the Spirit never ends for a believer.

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Healing the wounds of the mind is not easy. Just because I know the truth and I know I should have more grace for myself, doesn't mean it's easy for me to do. But acknowleding the truth is the first step. Let this post be a reminder--like the letters in the Bible serve to remind the churches of truths easily forgotten--it's okay to have grace for yourself when you fall short.

"The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control." Galatians 5:22-23

• The fruit of the Spirit is not just a depiction of Christ's character or how we should treat others, it is also applicable to how we treat ourselves.

• The fruit of the Spirit proves that it is okay to love ourselves, be kind to ourselves, and treat ourselves with gentleness. In other words, it's okay to have grace for yourself.

It's okay to not be perfect. It's okay if this process of following Christ feels messy and harder than you thought. It doesn't mean you're not saved or even that your faith is weak. It means your faith is honest. And like in any relationship or when visiting any doctor, the only way to repair and heal is through honest confession of what's wrong.

Through honest relationship with the Lord, your Spirit, mind, and heart will be renewed. Sometimes this renewal is required daily. Sometimes our windows of positivity and faith on-fire are short before we need our embers reignited. But the Lord is always with you, waiting to renew your Spirit and reignite your fire.

Don't compare your journey to someone else's. Don't think you're not a real Christian just because you're struggling and it doesn't look like anyone else is. We're all struggling, whether we choose to admit it or not. We all have our cross to bear. If the Law is impossible for man to fulfill, how much more impossible is a life that embodies Christ's character? We can't do this alone. We need Him. We've always needed Him. And, unlike many in the Bible, we are blessed to live in the days of grace. We are blessed to have the helper of the Holy Spirit to guide us in truth and in love. We are blessed to be free of the law and of the need to be perfect.