Unfinished Ribbon

I remember a few years ago listening to a pastor tell a story about a man who he was walking a journey with. This man wasn't a Christian, but was in a friendship with the pastor. The pastor ended the story there, saying that some stories just don't have that bow tied around them to wrap the present up as finished. That imagery has always stuck with me, I think because I feel like it's the story of my life.

I am an unfinished process. I have many hang ups and short falls, especially when it comes to my walk with Christ. I am not where I think I should be to be doing and attempting to pursue the things that I am doing and attempting to pursue. But I don't believe that this should stop my pursuit of all that God has for me.

This morning I looked at a few of the lives of the disciples, and I really got encouraged by them. It all started with this verse in Matthew 13, where the disciples ask Jesus to explain His parables. Right away I loved that. They were with Him all the time in the flesh, and heard all the things that we've heard from Him and way more. Their minds must have been in there with His, and yet there was so much that they still didn't understand, and so far for them still to travel. Then, of course there was Peter, who denied Jesus three times. Thomas, the famous doubting Thomas, who refused to believe that Jesus had done what He had repeatedly told them He would do until he had seen it himself. Judas flat out betrayed Jesus, even though he had walked with the Man for so many years. Even before all this, there was John the Baptist, who had his doubts in Jesus while he was in prison, too. I was thinking about all of these guys, and their shortfalls and failures and hiccups, and I realized something that really really encouraged me, and I hope it can encourage you, too. They all were walking with Jesus, and they were still far from perfect. But the only person who escaped from Jesus' hands, the only one who slipped out of the protection and forgiveness and purpose of Christ, was the one guy who, himself, gave up. It was never Jesus who walked away from them, or turned them away or refused to go any further with such weak, failure-filled people.

Isaiah 24:16 says, "For a righteous man may fall seven times and rise again."

The verse doesn't call those that don't fall righteous. It says that the righteous are those that rise again. And again. And again. I can do that. I can be righteous. I am most definitely a work in progress, but by the Word of God, I will not give up, or count myself out or declare a state of unrighteousness. I will rise again, and I will chase after the dream God has put in my heart, and I will pursue righteousness as a righteous man.

Because I want Jesus to present me to God one day as a perfect gift with a finished ribbon.