An Amazing Bath in Grace

When:

I continue to pull myself up by my bootstraps, to add inches to my spiritual stature

I huff and puff to impress God

I thrash around trying to fix myself

I am focused on bad choices and failed dreams

I compare myself to others to bolster my righteousness

I am judgmental and critical of others

I don't want to see my imperfect existence

I deny my sins and deceive myself, all the time lying to myself

I am unloving, irritable, angry, resentful, disrespectful to my husband

I feel I need to apply spiritual cosmetics to make myself presentable to Him

I can't accept ownership of my poverty, powerlessness and neediness

I can't be honest with myself or others about who I am and my sin

I believe and doubt

I hope and get discouraged

I am trusting and still suspicious

I am honest and still play games

I believe God owes me for my faithfulness

I think/feel I can merit something on my own

I have to do and do and do instead of just receive like a little child

I can't trust in God because it's a matter of my heart

I walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty phase of life

year after year I long for perfection and it doesn't appear

I see that my old sin compulsions are still reigning in my life

despair destroys all joy and courage

I feel insecure, inadequate or mistaken

panic, depression and disillusionment are near me

I want to hide the ugly and repulsive in me

A wave of light breaks into my darkness and only by a Grace Bath, am I able to see:

God loves me as I am but also knows me as I am!

it's in my deepest awareness of myself that I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ and have done nothing to earn it or deserve it.

I am accepted. I am accepted, by that which is greater than me.  

I don't need to do ANYTHING. 

I don't need to seek for ANYTHING, perform ANYTHING, or intend ANYTHING. 

I only need to accept the face that I am accepted - and it's here that I experience grace!

My heart lives in each one of the WHENs but longs to live out of and embrace more and more the Grace Bath.  

I am reading again THE RAGAMUFFIN GOSPEL by Brennan Manning. The above while not original, is taken from chapter one - Something is Radically Wrong and is written in a format that God used to pierce my heart and help me to see more clearly.