I considered not boring you with excerpts from the book I've been reading (Ragamuffin's Gospel), but it has been great for me to read, so I am going to share a bit:

"Though the Scriptures insist on God's initiative in the work of salvation - that by grace we are saved, that the Tremendous Lover has taken to the chase - our spirituality often ends up beginning with self, not God. Personal responsibility has replaced personal response. We talk about acquiring virtue as if it were a skill that can be attained like good handwriting or a well-grooved golf swing. In the penitential seasons, we focus on overcoming our weaknesses, getting rid of our hang ups, and reaching Christian maturity. We sweat through various spiritual exercises as if they were designed to produce a Christian Charles Atlas.

Though lip service is paid to the gospel of grace, many Christians live as if it is only personal discipline and self-denial that will mold the perfect me. The emphasis is on what I do rather than on what God is doing. In this curious process, God is a benign old spectator in the bleachers who cheers when I show up for morning quiet time...We believe that we can pull ourselves up by our bootstraps - indeed, that we can do it ourselves.

Sooner or later we are confronted with the painful truth of our inadequacy and insufficiency. Our security is shattered and our boot straps are cut. Once the fervor has passed, weakness and infidelity appear. We discover our inability to add even one inch to our spiritual stature. There begins a long winter of discontent that eventually flowers into gloom, pessimism, and a subtle despair because it goes unrecognized, unnoticed, and therefore unchallenged. It takes the form of boredom, drudgery. We are overcome by the ordinariness of life, by daily duties done over and over again. We secretly admit that the call of Jesus is too demanding, that surrender to the Spirit is beyond our reach.

We start acting like everyone else. Life takes on a joyless, empty quality. We begin to resemble the leading character in Eugene O'Neill's play "The Great God Brown": "Why am I afraid to dance, I who love music and rhythm and grace and song and laughter? Why am I afraid to live, I who love life and the beauty of flesh and the living colors of the earth and sky and sea? Why am I afraid to love, I who love love?"

Something is radically wrong.

Our huffing and puffing to impress God, our scrambling for brownie points, our thrashing about trying to fix ourselves while hiding our pettiness and wallowing in guilt are nauseating to God and are a flat denial to the gospel of grace. Our approach to the Christian life is as absurd as the enthusiastic young man who had just received his plumber's license and was taken to see Niagara Falls. He studied it for a minute and then said, "I think I can fix this"...

The word grace has lost it's raw, imaginative power."

I think he puts it all well. I've been thinking about that alot lately- what role we play in our spiritual growth- in our sanctification. Hebrews 12:14 says that without sanctification, no man will see God. Now, whether that is referring to when we go to Heaven or here in the 'land of the living', I'm not sure. But even if our salvation (eternal security) and sanctification (being made like God) are entirely different yet related things, I know that I want to see God here on earth. I want to see His hand in things. I want to see and experience His love today, not just when I'm in Heaven someday. I'm not saying that God doesn't reveal Himself to people who aren't walking with Him, because I know He does all the time, but I think the more we know Him, the more we will recognize Him in our lives.

I've heard it put that our role in sanctification is to put ourselves, like a piece of clay, into God's hands, and from there He will mold and shape us into who we are meant to be. I think that's key though...putting ourselves in His hands. If we don't seek Him, the chances of our looking like Him are slim much less the chances of our hearts truly being changed. And we (I attest to this in my own life) can only go so long pretending to look like 'good little Christians'. Because without our hearts set on Him, on His glory, there will be little power in our lives. And that, the hand/power of God, are at the root of our sanctification. I keep reminding myself the good news is that it is His will that I be sanctified, and, so long as I open myself to Him, (here's the cheesy line: like a flower opens to the sun), I can't screw that up.

I've thought before that the goal for us was to become more and more perfect. But I don't think that anymore. Matthew 5:48 says "Be perfect, as your Father in Heaven is perfect." But the translation is actually closer to, "Be complete, as your Father in Heaven is complete." And I believe that if we are in Christ, we will be complete no matter how imperfect we are.

Come Lord Jesus, and make us complete, because all that is good within us is from Your hand.

"For Zion's sake I will not keep silent, for Jerusalem's sake I will not remain quiet, till her righteousness shines out like the dawn, her salvation like a blazing torch." Isaiah 62:1