Inconsistent

I am not a hypocrite.

I am, however, a bit inconsistent at times.

There is a big difference between those two ideas.   A hypocrite says one thing and then actively does the opposite.  Someone who is inconsistent says one thing, and then because they are imperfect does not always do as he says he will do.  But he tries, he just comes up short from time to time (or most of the time).

God has been helping me sort through some of the areas where I am inconsistent.  As a pastor, I talk about how to live all the time, and I try my best to model it for them, but often my humanity takes over and I fail.  And even though my students know that I’m imperfect, it seems like they have this expectation of me that as a pastor I would fail a lot less than I actually do.  I am working to correct my own inconsistencies, but the more I do the more problems I begin to notice in my own life.  It makes me feel like a hypocrite.  How can I tell anyone how to live when I don’t live that way myself?

And then I remember that while God wants perfection to be our goal, that He loves us in the middle of my sin.  And when I speak I don’t tell people how to live, as if I had any authority in that matter at all.  Instead, I tell people how God tells us all to live, and more often than not I touch on issues that God is teaching me and pass those things on to my students.  Trying and failing doesn’t make us hypocrites, it makes us human.  And Christ died for a bunch of sinful humans who couldn’t get it all right so that we wouldn’t have to.