Come as You Are

“God meets us where we are, not where we pretend to be.” Larry Crabb

In a world where we are trained to bring our shiny moments to the forefront (and don’t forget the filter on top of that) and we mostly see the highlight real for social media, the thought of bringing who we really are to the table can feel terrifying. 

Not just in the social media world, but if you grew up in the church world you know that certain things are just not okay there either. There can be harsh judgment and even worse, now we have cancel culture. There’s grace, but only to an extent and love can feel very conditional at times. Not only that, the church as a whole is very uncomfortable with pain, which is odd because the one thing that we are assured of in scripture is that this world will bring trouble and pain.

Here’s the good news in all of this. God is with us in the mess. He doesn’t expect us to get our act together to come to him. He says come as you are. He doesn’t want the pretending and pretense, he wants the real us. He knows anyways. 

When we show up as we are, we don’t stay that way. When we drop the shame and hiding we can actually leave changed and walk in freedom. That freedom brings new growth and flourishing in our life in awesome ways. 
When I think of what brings thriving to my life, it’s when I can come to God as I am and when I have a few safe people with who I can do the same. Not everyone is a safe person so we have to use wisdom in our vulnerability. Community is absolutely key to thriving, but so is knowing that God is always the safe place to land. 

Come as you are, not as you pretend to be.