A lot of people think of the Bible as a book of rules. Others think of it as a book filled with good advice. What the Bible really is, is a story. It's a story of encouragement for broken and hurting people who continuously fail. It's a story of encouragement, because that's the kind of people that appear in the Bible-the kind of people that God uses.
A king that gives into lust, gets a girl pregnant and kills her husband to cover it up. A man adopted into privilege who murders and then spends forty years hiding in the desert. A woman divorced multiple times and ostracized from her community. These are the people that God chooses to represent him in this world.
In the book of Genesis God gives his chosen people a name-'Israel'. A name that in hebrew means 'one who struggles with God'. It's an unusual name to give to the people who are to take his message into the world.
Maybe God's trying to tell us something. Maybe he's trying to tell us that we don't have to live perfectly to live with him. To live with God means to struggle with him.
That is what we are called to be. Not perfect, not sinless. Simply 'God strugglers'.
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