The Perfect Imperfect Example...

For a long time I have said that my employer never changes, just my job(s).  It was decades ago when I thought of all the opportunities I have had for 'work', finding myself seeing each as God's investment and leading to teach me things He wanted me learn to make me a more effective, rounded individual able to relate to others around me.  He has provided a 'varied and mixed' set of jobs and means to make a living, blessing me with a life partner whose steady, valuable perfect placement allowed me opportunity to move in and out of various employ.

As I sit now on the precipice of working part-time directly for, continuing with my principle employer (if you haven't gotten it yet, God), I am humbled that He would use one such as I for the building of His kingdom; me with warts and faults and all.  I am thankful for the examples in scripture of others 'just like me', who had warts and faults, producing good and sometimes bad, pressing forward with their King, giving each of us, including yours truly, hope that He will continue transforming our lives here, for the eternal one before us.

You see, unlike many other 'faiths', ours, linked to the Bible and an amazing history spanning millenia, clearly shows us human condition and failures in the light of grace and leading of a holy God.  This is the life of faith.  Many of you have set up beliefs about God and the Bible never having read any of it, trusting only in what others say about it.  Jesus spent a lot of time chastising the religious.  Did you know that?  God allows people to make choices giving Solomon such great things, yet he succumbing to things that brought demise toward the end of his life.  Lessons to be learned?  You bet!

Is God still working today?  Absolutely!  Does He want to work in and through us, His people who are following Him?  Indeed He does!  What it 'looks like' may be a far cry from what 'typical, historical believers' and non-believers might think.  To make it clear again, Jesus chastised the religious.  It is NOT religion or the practice of righteousness that speaks of His power and grace, it is the practice of honest, sincere relationship with God that speaks of His turning failures into successes;  Broken people fixed; Prideful people broken, brought to a deep sense of humility and love for a community of broken people.  Wounded people in and around the community of faith, some with it, many without it, even many of these choosing to enter the doors of the church.  But all of us  wounded.

So, today, in this blog entry, I speak of the honesty and integrity I see in the Bible; an exposé of

real lives with real struggles and real failures leading to real transformational understanding of what a real God does with us.  Full of imperfections, His people working to submit to His leading and powerful workings making a difference in real lives for a real eternity.  I enjoy reading the Bible because it is real.  Before you go about criticizing and complaining about those who profess to be followers of God, have you read any of the Bible?  If you did, I think you'd find, like me, that we followers, just like all in the Bible, are not perfect.  Have you tried it?  Really reading the Bible?  Don't take other's word for it.  Read it for yourself.  I think you will find, like I, that God chooses to use broken vessels of whom I am, and others in The Book are, the perfect imperfect example.