The Imperfect Disciple: Grace for People Who Can't Get Their Act Together

by Jared C. Wilson

We are constantly told that our problems are primarily about self-actualization, about success or happiness

or just acting right or feeling right. And we definitely have problems with all of these things, but they are not our main problems. I think, deep down, you probably know this. It’s the reason why, try as you might to address all these issues, you never feel quite fixed.

I take a look at my messed-up soul every day. I feel completely overwhelmed and underequipped. And so I hold on to the gospel. I pour some gospel into my soul. I am good to go another day. I might be crawling through that day or I might be balled up in my bed, unwilling to charge the Valley of Elah that is my life, but the smile of God is over me continually. Day and night his steadfast love sustains me.

I’ve actually found hope in that little message I used to feel nervous about. Now it’s me I feel nervous about. The only thing I feel confident in is that message!

These two things are not the same! We have to get that straight, first of all. Too many foolish teachers in the church equate wounds with sins, and vice versa, and this needlessly frustrates people’s following of Jesus. We further traumatize victims when we tell them their wounds are sins, and we demotivate repenters when we tell them their sins are wounds.

so good

So here’s what we need to do: turn some things off. Put some things down. Don’t just do something, sit there.

until we learn to simply sit there, to be still, to be settled, to look at the great big world around us, to consider with wonder all these incredible humans made in God’s image, to look at his endlessly fascinating creation in long, steady concentration, we will continue

in spiritual myopia and spiritual boredom.

When our vision is constantly occupied by small things, we are tempted to yawn m...

our obedience is not the grounds of our relationship but the overflow of it!

Once upon a time in our not-so-distant past, experts predicted that with the rapidly increasing advances in technology, Americans would have a shorter workweek and so much time on their hands for recreation that they wouldn’t know how to fill it. Well, we figured it out. We filled it up with more work and more busyness.

He is, in fact, more eager to listen than you are to speak.

He’s listening. Open up.

until we engage fully in the messy community of discipleship, we cannot expect to feel Christ fully engaged in the mess of us.

We seek out the covenant of church membership, then, not simply for its privileges but for its responsibilities and obligations. We want not to join the club, in other words, but rather to join the mission.

And this means approaching the community of faith not as a consumer but as a contributor. It means, if I can use this language—and it’s my book, so I say I can—becoming a “low-maintenance” church member.

How can we work toward our leaders’ joy and not their anxiety? It’s no advantage to us to be a nagging pain to our pastors. They will have to give an account for how they pastored us. And we’ll have to give an account for how well we presented ourselves to be pastored.

Too many church folks are expecting their pastors or their churches to complete them, to virtually “be Jesus” to them. But only Jesus can be Jesus to us. There’s only one Messiah. So if we’re expecting all our inner dysfunction and awkwardness and hurts and fears to get fixed by the experience of Christian community, good luck with that. Everybody else is expecting the same thing. We’re a bunch of beggars demanding the other beggars give them bread.

The closer we get to God through Jesus, the more the Spirit cultivates in us humility and love for God and neighbor. If we do not focus on the humbling, empowering gospel of grace and if, in fact, we stay “religious,” we get puffed up in our own achievements and successes and lost in our own self-righteousness, and our hearts grow colder both to God and to our neighbors. Even if we are engaged in spiritual pursuits, if we are focused on ourselves, we end up only using God and using others. And if you’re using people, you certainly aren’t loving them. Only the gospel gives us the security (of union with Christ) to risk reputation and hurt in order to love others sacrificially and boldly.

The more we experience the kindness of God in and through our own repentance, the more kindness we find to afford others. To be unkind to others, in fact, is to disbelieve God’s kindness and to spit on it.

For a follower of Jesus to be unkind to others is to depict Jesus as unkind. But indeed, because the almighty God has provided us with his inexhaustible kindness, we find an ever-deepening well of kindness for others.

struggling to believe God could love me, struggling to believe God could even stomach me, warring with the devil over where I belonged, warring with myself over where I stood. So many of the sinful patterns that plagued my life for so long arose from the mistaken belief that my soul was in some kind of spiritual limbo. I was facing a crisis of identity. A question of reality. Who am I? Whose am I?

That real you, the you inside that you hide, the you that you try to protect, the you that you hope nobody sees or knows—that’s the you that God loves.

No, he doesn’t love your sin, of course. But he loves your true self. Without pretense, without façade, without image management, without the religious makeup. You the sinner, you the idolater, you the worshiper of false gods—that’s the you Jesus loves.

Once we discover that grace is oxygen, we can breathe freely.

I think by “boasting in weakness” Paul means that we ought to own our weakness. To own up to it. It does not mean throwing a pity party. It does not mean having a martyr’s complex. It does not mean being Debbie Downer. It does not mean the kind of self-conscious self-deprecation that actually brings more attention to one’s self. It is not a false humility. It simply means owning up to the reality that if it were not for Jesus Christ, everything about us would blow apart in the gale-force hurricane of our own sin and frailty. There is more security, in fact, with Christ in the middle of a stormy sea than without Christ in the warm stillness of our bathtub.

Maybe you’ve been struggling with depression for a long time, and other people are getting frustrated with you and wonder why you can’t just “snap out of it,” and you’ve tried to tell them that you would if you could and that you don’t want to feel this way, and you’ve begged God from the depths of your soul, “Take this darkness off of me!”

It is true that sometimes God doesn’t become our only hope until God becomes our only hope.

When you are in the pit of suffering—on the verge of death, even—Jesus isn’t up in heaven simply blasting you down below with some ethereal virtues. He’s not “sending good thoughts”—or worse, “good vibes”—your way. No, when you are laid low in the dark well of despair, when the whole world seems to be crashing down on you, when your next breath seems sure to be your last, Christ Jesus is down in the void with you, holding you. He keeps your hand between his own. He offers his breast for your weary head. He whispers the words of comfort a whisker’s breadth from your ear: “And behold, I am with you always” (Matt. 28:20, emphasis added). Grace is all-sufficient for weakness and for suffering because Jesus is all-sufficient.

I think heaven is way beyond our mental bounds. Heaven is where we finally feel and experience—really, literally, tangibly—the love that is greater than our capacity to love and to even think about love. It’s when glory swallows up existence as we know it, and all the beauty and wonder and grandeur and exquisite graces of this awesome created world become somehow more, some way deeper and more resonant.

I want to, by God’s grace, give you the freedom to own up to your not having your act together. I wrote this book for all who are tired of being tired. I wrote this book for all who read the typical discipleship manuals and wonder who they could possibly be written for, the ones that make us feel overly burdened and overly tasked and, because of all that, overly shamed. You are not your ability to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. You are not the sum of your spiritual accomplishments and religious devotion. You are a great sinner, yes. But you have a great Savior.