I’m quite a self-conscious person, I always feel like I’m not good enough for the thing I’m doing, the people I’m with, or the environment I’m in. I’m constantly trying to change who I am so that I’ll fit in better, or be accepted by people. Through social media, we’re able to portray ourselves as these perfect individuals, post the bits of our lives that we think will help us be accepted more and untag the bits that embarrass us. We’re constantly living an edited, superficial life, trying our best to make sure that people don’t see us for who we truly are, for fear of them rejecting us.
And sometimes, we do it with God.
We think, in order that God can accept us, let alone use us, we need to be something other than ourselves. We think God only accepts perfect people, that God can only use people who have it all together, people who don’t make mistakes, swear or watch Eastenders. We think that the amount God loves us and the extent he can use us matters on what we have to offer him. But that’s totally missing the point…
In the book of John, Jesus is at a wedding party, and they run out of wine. I’m sure we’ve all heard the story, but here it is anyway:
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“On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples. When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’ And Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.’ His mother said to the servants, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’ Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to the servants, ‘Fill the jars with water.’ And they filled them up to the brim. And he said to them, ‘Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.’ So they took it. When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, ‘Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.’ This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him. After this he went down to Capernaum, with his mother and his brothers and his disciples, and they stayed there for a few days.”
So they’ve run out of wine, and Jesus’ mum comes and asks Jesus to do something about it. What does Jesus do? He asks the servants to run him a bath, and then take some of that bath water and give it to the master of feasts. This bath water has suddenly transformed into the best wine of the party.
Somehow what was water becomes wine.
Like I said, often we feel like we need to be something special before God will accept us or use us. We think that we need to become some kind of super human before we can ever be good enough to be used by God.
But all he wants is bath water because he can do the rest.
All he wants is for us to be ourselves, without putting on a front, without untagging the messy bits, just out plain imperfect selves, because it’s not about us it’s about him. 2 Corinthians 4:7 tells us that we are just simple, cracked jars of clay, which Jesus puts his treasure in!
Jesus is calling us to come as we are, warts and all and let him use us and change us into what we need to be.
Let’s stop trying to live edited, superficial lives that project an image of who we think we should be. And let’s let Jesus into our broken, messy lives and let him make something beautiful.
