toddcast

A few years ago I traded my gas and electric lawn equipment for battery-powered tools. I loved them, until the batteries wore out. No big deal, I thought. I bought a new battery and got back to work. But within a couple of weeks, it started dying on me. I'd be halfway through the yard and the blower would just quit. So I set the battery on the charger, swapped in the backup, and finished the job. The next weekend, I grabbed the new battery, fully charged and ready to go. A few minutes in, the blower died again. I was ready to throw that battery in the trash. Then a thought stopped me: What if it isn't the battery? What if it's the charger? It was the charger. The battery was fine. It had never been getting a charge in the first place. No charge, no power. It's that simple. I think I'm a lot like that battery. I run down fast. I fall short of the person I want to be. The good things I want to do start to feel like heavy lifting. And too often I find myself aski...

I'm not the person I want to be. I suppose all of us could say that. We have weaknesses. We have faults. We sin. In so many ways we have failed to be the person we committed to be when we said yes to Jesus. Acknowledging that can be deflating, if not depressing, but recently I have found some hope in my shortcomings. I am preaching through a short section in the apostle Paul's letter to a church he helped establish, the church in Philippi. In the middle of that letter he takes a break from teaching and gets personal, and oddly enough he reveals he has come to the same conclusion I have. He says it plainly — I have not arrived at my goal! If anyone could have said he had arrived, I would think it would be Paul. His resume is impressive, to say the least — church planter, apostle, author of more than half the New Testament books. Yet as accomplished as he was, he too can say, "I'm not who I want to be." I have come to the conclusion that it's okay not to...