Growing up in church I listened to people share their stories and talk about what God was teaching them. When I was younger I often used to think, “They’ve been Christians for a long time, how are they still learning some of these things?”

I had this false idea that once you had followed Jesus for long enough, you would learn all there is to know about God, how to be a Christian, what it means to follow him. I knew no one would ever be perfect, but I figured you could (or should) at least know about the Christian life.

Man was I wrong.

As finite human beings we simply can not know everything. We are always learning and growing. One of the things that many believers struggle with is this idea that we aren’t as far along as we should be.

We still struggle with a lot of the same sin issues. We aren’t as loving and forgiving as we know we should be. We know we should do one thing but yet still do the other.

We still have so far to go to become anything slightly like Jesus.

It can be very discouraging.

In Hebrews 12 we are encouraged to run the race with endurance that God has set before us. But in order to do this well, it then says,

…looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

Looking to Jesus.

Not our brokenness or the fact that we blew it again. Looking at and dwelling on our failures won’t help us.

Jesus is the founder of our faith. He saved us, we didn’t save ourselves.

Jesus is the perfecter of our faith. He is the perfect one that stood and died on our behalf.

We have to remember that. Looking to ourselves won’t lead us to be more like Jesus because we are nowhere close to Jesus.

Only Jesus can make us more like Jesus. Looking to anyone or anything else will lead you astray.