Cathy's Story

On the wall in my bedroom was a picture of Jesus, as a shepherd walking a frightened girl across a bridge over fomenting waters. Somehow that picture captured the feelings of aloneness I experienced, even though I grew up in a large farm family on the Saskatchewan prairies. Life meant living by an ethic of hard work and conforming to a strict religious code, according to the understanding of a group of Mennonites who sang in unison, wore dark clothes and where even a Sunday family picnic with baseball might raise eyebrows. And I was a good girl! I tried very hard to please those around me, and wondered if there was a way to please God so that I would not always have this feeling of being on the outside looking in. Would the Good Shepherd in the picture notice me? Why did I feel He never noticed how hard I was trying to be the good girl? If I could up sum up my life in those early years, before the Good Shepherd found me, it would be “aloneness” or “alienation”. It seemed I was on a search to find real connection.

It was into this sense of lostness, that the words I encountered in a book, which was actually a quote from the Bible, signaled a light to follow. “If you search for me with all your heart, you will surely find me”. In my finite mind, I had not yet grasped the fact that indeed the Shepherd was pursuing me as I tried the routes of “being good”, “going to church” and “reading the Bible” as ways to appeal to God to accept me. Gradually I began to realize that I could never sufficiently please the Good Shepherd, and that indeed, all my so-called “goodnesses” were simply what the Bible called, “filthy rags”. Slowly I saw that my only hope lay in the Good Shepherd alone. I began to faithfully listen to the “Hour of Decision” by Billy Graham”, but God still seemed so inaccessible. I wanted to repent, to believe yet seemed unable to do so. I remember one night looking into a stormy sky, noting how it mirrored my own heart. Again the words of Billy Graham rang in my heart, “You must renounce your sins and believe in Jesus”. I said, “Yes, Jesus, I do, I do, and I believe in you”. The stormy sky in my heart lifted to the bright sunshine of relief, forgiveness, acceptance. The little good girl was freed from the shackles of “trying to be good enough for God” to believe that He received me as his child because Jesus had paid the debt I owed. He perfectly obeyed and loved God like I had tried and failed to do, and he forgave me. I had made an idol of being good and that idol had kept me from freely embracing Him. Now I was accepted! I was accepted, not on the basis of my own goodness and my proud efforts at trying to be good enough. I was accepted because the Good Shepherd had paid for all my sin, my proud efforts to do it myself, my idol of being a “good girl”. It all crumbled and I saw that I was accepted into God’s heart because of Jesus and what He did for me! I was accepted. I belonged!

Do I still struggle with that familiar idol, of wanting to please by my “good deeds”? Yes, so often I need to remind myself of the gospel, the good news that I never come to God on my own merits, but always because Jesus died for me, and rose again. When I resort to “trying to be good” or note the seduction of the approval seeking idol lurking in my heart, I recall that Jesus promised to remake me into a person of integrity that will remind people of Him. He wants to free me from the flaw of people pleasing, from the seduction of wanting to look good, to a focus that cares about how people view Jesus, and not me. Many times I find myself groaning inwardly when I hear of another instance where biblical morality is shunned, or where the name of Christ is devalued. I find that I long to see people embrace the truth that is in the gospel, the good news that Christ has entered history, embraced humanity by becoming a man, paying for our sin and conquering our foe, Death, by rising again. I want to spend my life being a signpost for Jesus, pointing to Him as “the way, the truth and the Life”.