Touré Roberts - The Gift of Imperfection

I want to discuss the idea of the gift of imperfection. The gift of imperfection. Let’s pray. Father, thank you so much for your Word; it is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. Your Word edifies us; it builds us up. God, You’ve given us this beautiful expression—this wonderful passage of Scripture—that is loaded with so much truth, divine resources that bring healing, strength, wisdom, and victory. So, I thank You for every person who is listening right now, every person who is watching. I thank You that this meal You have prepared for them is going to fill them to the full; it will be exactly what they need to push them further along their journey to becoming everything You created them to be. We pray these things in the matchless name of Jesus. Amen. Amen.

So, early this morning, during my meditation time, I was moved to think about the goodness of God. I went back over my life, reflecting on stages and seasons, and I saw so many things that God had brought me through—so many tricky situations, even dangerous ones, and so many broken things happening in my life. Have you ever done that? You look back over your life and see how God has blessed you so wonderfully that you forget how jacked up things used to be? Sometimes you realize that you were shielded from perceiving how jacked up it was when you were in the midst of it, right? And it’s not just how jacked up life was, but also how jacked up we were! Have any of you ever taken a stroll down memory lane, thinking about God? He just starts saying, «Yeah, remember that? You forgot all about it because I’ve been so good that you forgot you were there.» I had one of those experiences with God this morning, early in the day, when I started thanking Him. I was overwhelmed with gratitude and thanksgiving. Then I saw something about my history that I had never noticed before. I saw a consistent truth that had played out in my life, and when I looked back, I realized that everything God used to make me great was flawed. My background was flawed; my relationship with my dad was flawed; my dad was flawed. My mom is amazing, but she was flawed too. Everything God used to move me forward in life, to bless me and raise me up, was imperfect. There was not one thing He used to bring me to this point that was perfect, and that is amazing because it tells me that God uses broken, busted, and imperfect things to weave together the tapestry of our lives. Oh, isn’t that something? So, perfection doesn’t start with perfection, come on, somebody! When God is perfecting something, He doesn’t use perfect things to perfect it. This is the mystery of God: no one is produced by perfect circumstances. No one who is great became great through perfect materials. All of it—not some of it, all of it—was flawed. Oh, God! Can I speak to you today a little bit? It all was flawed. So, what I’m learning is that perfection, maturity, wholeness, and growth are not born from perfect circumstances. Watch this: it is the byproduct of the fusion between God’s strength and our weakness. Oh, God, help me! That’s what the text is talking about. I love this: the Apostle Paul, before verse 8, in verses six and seven, is essentially discussing how he was given a thorn in his flesh so that he would not be exalted above measure, so he wouldn’t be puffed up or get a big head because God had raised him up and done great things with him. I feel this for some of you; you’ve been raised up by God. Here’s the thing: if you’re not careful, it’s easy to forget who you were when God found you. So, God says, «You know, so that I wasn’t exalted above measure, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger to remind me of who I am not.» It’s not something to remind me that I wasn’t always casting out devils or preaching the gospel or laying hands on the sick; I wasn’t always walking in integrity. He gave me something I couldn’t shake. I asked the Lord in my pursuit of perfection—watch this—because he was after perfection. This is the same Paul who said, «I am forgetting those things that are behind and reaching forward to those things ahead; I’m pressing toward the mark.» We know that the Apostle Paul had a growth mentality. He desired to be everything God created him to be.