Shortcomings...

Shortcomings...

We all have them. We can try to compensate for them, cover them or just plain live in denial of them, but they are there and they are more apparent that we would like to admit. The problem with a shortcoming is that the person who has it is typically the last one to realize it. They have lived with themselves so long and have gotten so used to this glaring weakness that their eyes have adjusted to the dysfunction. They see themselves through a filtered perspective.

However, there are some people who are very much aware of their shortcomings and are completely taken out by the incongruence of their insides and their outsides. They refuse to say anything, do anything or be anything because they don't want to let someone down with what they know to be true about themselves. Rather than speak up and risk that their shortcoming might surface, they stay quiet to ensure that it doesn't. Instead of accepting a responsibility, they excuse themselves with self-depreciating comments of unworthiness. They are so paralyzed by their own self-awareness that they have added scorn to scars, insult to injury.

I think I am a nice configuration of both on most days. Just enough disclosure to let people know I'm real, just enough closure to keep people from knowing I'm fragile. This is the tightrope of leadership. How much do you share? How honest can you be? How broken is too broken? How together is too together?

I'm not sure if it's the softening that comes with getting a little older, but I'm realizing more now than ever the vulnerabilities of my makeup. I'm getting more and more honest about my shortcomings and my need for God's grace to fill in the cracks of my broken heart. I don't think myself above any sort of sin or failure or lapse of judgement. I know I'm just like everybody else who's fallen and is falling short of the glory of God on a regular basis. My sufficiency is from God, my competency is from God, my merit is from God...not myself.

On my own, I'm a flawed and fallen man. Brittle. Thin. It's only by God's grace that I can rise again after coming short of the mark. And when that shortcoming reminds me that I'm unworthy, I say, "What of it? I know that I'm imperfect and unable to stand on my own credentials, yet there is one who has taken my shortcomings and given me his overcomings."

In Christ, I'm not a shortcomer. I'm an overcomer.

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