Are you tired of trying to become the perfect Christian? I was like that too. Let’s talk about tired performances, the grace we forget, and the real freedom we see in being messy and beloved people.
It reminded me of the next city when my wife went to look after her sick mother and put me in the children accountable. One Sunday morning, I pulled into the church parking lot. My knuckles have turned white on the handle. The 10-minute drive was on the battlefield. My two kids were in each other’s throats in the back seat, my coffee sloshed into my only clean shirt and my patience had evaporated somewhere between the third stop sign and my teenager’s epic eye roll.
Now I sat there for a moment, watching other families pile up from their pristine SUVs. They looked… peaceful. Assemble it. Just as they just meditated on the summit, rather than negotiating a peace treaty in their final pop that.
I’ve always done what I did. I took a deep breath, smoothing out the coffee stains on my knees and tidying my face. I practiced a small, gentle smile in the rearview mirror. “I have it all together. My faith is unshakable. My heart is full of peace,” he said. The smile was a complete and complete lie.
I shook the slumbery swarm into the door, and the familiar weight that sank down my shoulders calmed down. The weight of the “perfect Christian” checklist. Have you had a good, quiet time this week? (Black.) Have I prayed enough? (‘God, please help me not to sell these kids to the circus numbers?) Do I feel as joyous as seeing that woman over there?
The music has begun. I sang words, but my heart was a thousand miles apart. I was so busy with performance that I was busy managing the facade and couldn’t connect with the gods who were there to actually worship.
If you’ve ever felt that way, then you feel that it all comes down to a performance crushed by the weight of your own mental expectations, then pull up your friends, friends, chairs. This is for us. This is trading heavy, inappropriate yokes that actually fit. This was the day I began to be relieved of the pressure to become perfect, and instead I stumbled upon the arms of God, specializing in the imperfect people.
Checklist that kills our joy
We all know the checklist, right? It is an implicit, internalized standard in which we measure ourselves. No one will give it to you on your first day at the church, but you will absorb it by penetration.
Quiet Time Club at 5am: The belief that true spirituality only occurs in the darkness before Dawn, with a fully highlighted mug of Bible and artisan coffee. If you sleep, you have already failed that day. Emotional Straight Jacket: A good Christian is always full of joy, always peaceful, never doubt, never angry. Do you feel negative emotions? Soon, stuff it and smile! Testimony Trophy Case: Your past story is neat, neat and there’s a bow to it. Your present is a steady upward trajectory of victory. The struggle is what you had.
I have followed this ideal for years. I thought that was the key. Please try harder. Please do more. It’ll get better. But it left me with bone ties and felt like a scam. Not because God moved, but because he was too busy playing a monologue from him, actually sitting there and talking to him.
This performance-based faith is the cage. And what’s crazy is the people we made rock.
A yoke that fits in real life
One day, in the midst of my exhaustion, I actually read Jesus’ words. I mean, I really read them. I’m breathing the air as a drowser, not as another item on my checklist.
He was talking to people like me. People who were working. Heavy people. People tense under the weight of religious expectations accumulated by well-intentioned but misguided leaders. And his offer was not a new, improved checklist. It was an invitation.
“Come to all you who have his labor and heavy objects, and I will give you a rest, and I will bring my yoke to you, and I will learn about me. (Matthew 11:28-30).
That last sentence stopped me coldly. easy? Light? My yoke rubbed my shoulder raw. It was so heavy that I was able to barely get up. What was he talking about?
I remember sitting at a messy kitchen table and the morning sun hit bread crumbs from yesterday’s toast. And it hit me. I chose the wrong York. Perfectionist York is a solo York. It is designed for one. You succumb to yourself and pull you, and you will forever tense yourself to prove your worth.
But his York? It’s a double yoke. Designed for two. He’s on the other side. He’s not a taskmaster sitting in a cart and breaking a whip. He is the trace partner that will pull along with you. The burden of acquiring God’s love? What about proving our righteousness? He already carried it to the cross and left it there. The burden he places will vary. That’s a light burden to learn from him. Trust him. To make him stronger with our weaknesses.
The exchange he offered wasn’t something I could become stronger. It may be that he has finally admitted that I was weak, so his strength may have room for the end.
Where on earth did we get this idea?
If this bounty is so central, why do we go back to performance traps and go back so easily? I think it comes from several places.
For me, the majority of it was church culture. Don’t get me wrong – I love churches. That’s my family. But sometimes, if there’s no meaning, we celebrate the wrong thing. We hold testimony of drug dealers becoming pristine preachers (this is amazing!) but rarely praise the testimony of anxious mom and dad who didn’t scream at her children on Tuesday morning. That’s also a miracle! We hear the sermon in “Five Steps to a Better Prayer Life,” and feel guilty for not leaving with five new things.
After that, there’s social media. Good sadness. It is a highlight reel of the spirituality of everyone else. It’s so easy to scroll through and feel your nasty, quiet, questionable faith in your beautifully staged Bible flatray, eloquent prayer featured in the caption, “God has shown me this deep thing today!”
But if I was really honest, the biggest source of pressure was… me. My own pride. My fear. I wanted to be fine. I wanted people to think they had together. If anyone saw me the real me, I was impatient, suspicious, struggling – they were afraid that they would just not reject me. God was afraid that he would do so too.
It is fear to whisper, “If you’re not perfect, you won’t be loved.” And that’s a lie.
Saints were confused (and that’s the point)
I feel very comfortable with the Bible. Because it’s refreshing, almost shocking and honest about the people in it. God did not whitewash their stories.
Moses uttered. Elijah was magnificently depressed and hid in a cave. Peter was an impulsive confusion, constantly putting his feet in his mouth, even denying that he knew Jesus when it was most important.
And Paul? Apostle Paul, theological giant? He didn’t turn us off with some refined stories of his perfection. He tells us about his struggle at Romans 7:18 so that he does not get in the way.
Can you feel frustrated with that? Humanity? I want to do the right thing! I really do it! But I just keep ruining it! He gets it. He had “thorns on his flesh.” He asked God to take it. And God’s answer is not to remove it, but in 2 Corinthians 12:9, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is perfected with weakness.”
God’s power is not perfected by our power. It has become perfect at our weaknesses. The light goes out in the cracks. Our weakness is not a barrier to God’s love. They are the very things that rely on us to do. We are all in progress. A masterpiece under construction. And the master artist is endlessly patient.
Get away from the cage
That Sunday morning persona I told you? Someone with a gentle smile? I still have such days. Old habits die violently. But more and more, I’m sliding that mask. We are learning that the goal of this faith is not to become a perfect, spiritual superhero.
It’s about becoming like a little child. trust. dependence. Ensure the love of a parent who knows we trip and skin our knees and sometimes try to get it wrong. It’s about looking at people who are already racing for us.
The cage door was opened long ago. We were people who thought it was safe there and chose to stay inside. It’s not safe. That’s suffocating.
So take a deep breath. Relax your shoulders. You don’t need to understand it all. You just have to be him. The rest is growing, slowly changing, becoming. That’s his division. Our job is to trust, obey, and accept the truth that we are already and always fully loved. Not because of what we did, but because of who he is.
And my friend is the easiest and lightest burden.
Photo credit ©getTyimages/aaronamat.jpg
Emmanuel Abimbora is a creative freelance writer, blogger and web designer. He is a respectable Christian with uncompromising faith from Ondo, Nigeria, West Africa. As a child’s lover, Emmanuel runs a small primary school in Arigidi, Nigeria.
