iBelieve Truth Devotional for Women | 1 November 2021 | Message By Meg Bucher
TOPIC: Perfectionism Is an Illusion
“Therefore, since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God.” – 2 Corinthians 7:1 NIV
When I discovered my grade-school-aged daughter was hiding school papers with less than perfect scores, I stopped hanging the perfectly scored papers on the fridge. It was sending the wrong message, that the score on her paper mattered more than the effort she put into it. I apologized to her for sending the wrong message by posting only perfect scores on the fridge. She needed to be reminded that her life is worth more than test scores, grades, and honors.
Perfectionism yells, You are not good enough! Like a distortion peddle pushed down to the floor, it amplifies lies over truth.
So what does our verse mean, when it says, “let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God”? What does it mean to perfect holiness?
To perfect holiness, we need the camaraderie found in fellow believers. The mission to spread the good news of Jesus Christ is difficult, and we will be tempted to believe many amplified lies convincing us we are not good enough. “For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life,” Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians 4:7 (NIV). When we are tempted to compromise, or hide our “less than” in shame because we don’t think it’s possible to live up to holy standards of living, we need the crowd of believers surrounding us to take the perfect scores down from the fridge and remind us who we really are in Christ.