I Tried to Be the Perfect Christian | A Woodside Story Blog

I grew up in a home and a church that, out of love for the Lord, pursued excellence in their faith. I believed that holiness and righteous living were goals to pursue, and that created a drive in me to be the best version of myself and the best possible Christian. 

I made faith in Christ a means to an end. It became a pecking order for me: I’m in third place now; I’m in second place now. It was a competition to be the best. 

My wife and I grew up in the same environment, so we planned to continue it with our own kids. We pursued control, working to manage our image and show everyone we were the best we could be. People would tell me, “You’re the shining example,” and I took those compliments like a badge of honor that I had worked hard to earn. 

Then my wife and I reached a point where something wasn’t right. In my pride, I couldn’t see it, but she could. She had better discernment than I did, and the more she prayed about it, the more the Lord opened my heart. 

I Didn’t Understand My Own Brokenness  

During that time, my brother was running a Woodside Life Group, and he invited us to join. I thought, “Sure, I’ll help you run your Life Group, because you guys go to Woodside. What do you guys know about the Bible?” That shows just how prideful I was. 

One night we were driving home when my wife said, “I’ve been wanting to go to this church. When I go there, I see Jesus in the people and in the sermons.” I clenched the steering wheel because I knew she was right, but what came out of my mouth was self-incriminating. “We can’t leave,” I said. “You don’t understand how hard I’ve worked to get to this point.” She didn’t say anything, and the silence was deafening because I could hear how what I’d said reflected the true state of my heart. 

I had worked so hard in my faith to get to that point, and I had to ask myself what that point was. It was that my pastors finally respected me and the people in my church looked up to me. But the Lord kept working on my heart and humbled me again and again. 

Recognizing that we needed a fresh start in our faith, we decided to make Woodside Romeo our home church. Six months after we began attending, I had heard about the Celebrate Recovery program. I told a friend I would go along to support them, thinking that I definitely didn’t need it for myself. I had lived as perfectly as I could.  

Then I sat at the table, listened as everyone shared, and began to feel really uncomfortable. The Pharisee in me squirmed in my seat, thinking, “I’ve come to the wrong place. These people REALLY need Jesus.” And I could hear the Holy Spirit say,“You may not want to be here, but this is the table I’m sitting at. These are the people I want to be with.” 

I felt a breaking in my spirit. I had seen myself as righteous because of what I had achieved or avoided. I realized that we’re all broken, and Jesus meets with those who realize that. He meets with the ones reduced to saying, “I don’t have anything left to give. Help me, Savior.” I saw that if I wanted to get close to Him, I had to keep showing up…and the more I did, the more I saw how broken I really was. 

God Never Left Me 

Things took a dark turn after that. I lost my business, and our financial plans collapsed right in front of us. On our ten-year anniversary, when people go on big vacations and celebrate, my wife and I realized we were more in debt than ever. We were celebrating ten years worse off financially than we’d ever been. 

It was a dark season, but the people in Celebrate Recovery and the new friends I had made at Woodside walked through it with us.  

Psalm 23 tells us that even when we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, He is with us. He is the faithful shepherd who never leaves. I went through a really dark time and prayed some very honest prayers, but I never felt like He left me. In those moments, when the depths of my heart were spilling out, I felt His presence most closely.  

He Will Never Leave or Forsake You 

During that time, I was asked to speak to Woodside students about the goodness of God in the context of David’s words from Psalm 34: “…taste and see that the Lord is good!” 

David had written that Psalm when he was in a very dark season. I shared with the students that I wasn’t telling them that God was good from the mountain top; I was telling them about God’s goodness from the valley. 

Feelings are like a check engine light. They tell us there’s a problem, but they aren’t all truth. What’s true is what the Bible says: He will never leave us or forsake us, and nothing can separate us from the love of God. It’s one thing to know that in your head and another to know it in your heart. 

Your Righteousness Can’t Save You 

In Matthew 5:20, Jesus says, “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of Heaven.” When I tried to understand this, I pictured a planet that was going to be destroyed. Some people are trying to climb the highest mountain to escape, and that mountain is moral effort and behavior modification: better, better, better. It’s exhausting. Meanwhile, there’s a spaceship down in the field where everybody’s welcome. Who in their right mind would say, “I’ll pass on the spaceship, I’m going to take my chances with the mountain?” It’s absolutely ridiculous. 

If you’re going through something difficult, or you’re struggling with pride, God loves you. He is going to make you really uncomfortable, and that’s okay. I was looking for Jesus, which is why I pursued righteousness. I was looking for Him in all the “right” activities, but He was right there all along. I just had to stop striving and start trusting.