The bottom line is: Anything good in me is Jesus.
For my sake, I need to repeat it: Anything good in me is Jesus.
A friend recently gave me some lovely compliments. A few years ago, I would have hung on those compliments for dear life, grasping and clutching and wearing them and feeding on them.
But through tears and through bent knee and through inward battles, Jesus somehow has peeled my white-knuckled fingers off of clutching man’s praise and off of the clinging to the world’s perception of what is right or good or lovely. He has tipped my chin, wiped away my tears and looked me full in the eye. He has replaced my beating stone of a heart with feeling flesh, pierced it with his love splayed out on the Cross and now I am starting feel the prick of hurt that He feels. I feel the sting of pride or selfish ambition or arrogance. My eyes are slowly being replaced with His eyes.
It is not a perfect process for me. It is certainly not painless. But it is a faithful process that I know the Lord God will not cease working in me.
The white knuckles rear their ugliness daily. It’s a pushing down, a replacing, a regenerating, a daily process of repeating the thought that “Anything good in me is Jesus.” Sometimes it’s through gritted teeth. Sometimes I can say it gently, with a smile. And sometimes it’s through tears. But if there’s any good wrought in my life, it’s Jesus. He alone gets the praise.
My children. Body. Home. Marriage. Relationships. Anything good is Jesus.
And the bad? Oh dear, the bad. It’s me, really. And I give it over to be burned away, which will hopefully and ultimately reveal my loving Lord and Him alone.
So, Anything good in me is Jesus.