Relax! Stop Striving!!! August 9 Notes from papa via Paul Gray 

Relax! Stop Striving!!! August 9 Notes from papa via Paul Gray

To My wonderful child, who I love just like you are,
I want you to relax and let go of your desire for perfection. Religion has lied to you that you must constantly strive for perfection in your own strength and by your own hard work in order for you to have significance and for Me to accept and be pleased with you. Just the opposite is true!
Your quest for excellence actually robs you of what is really good… resting in My perfection! I love you completely, totally and unconditionally just like you are!
I love you in the midst of your imperfections. I love it when you relax, rest, trust in Me and when you know… really know… that I love you and am pleased with you even (and especially) when your actions and thoughts are not perfect.
This is the only way for you or anyone to truly know the real Me (who I am and what I’m like.) If you believe the lie that I have expectations of perfection in your actions and deeds, you also believe the lie that I really only love you, am only pleased with you, only like you… when you achieve perfection.
Believing that lie keeps you from enjoying and experiencing My wonderful unconditional love because you wrongly think that it’s conditional based on your perfection. Believing that lie keeps your focus on you, your efforts, your achievement, your determination as to what is perfect and acceptable and it totally keeps you from relating to Me as I want you to.
I want you to relate to Me in and with the knowledge, acceptance, thankfulness and gratitude of My unconditional love, unearned grace, unlimited acceptance and inclusion!
When you relax and cease your striving and take your focus off your efforts at perfection (and the resulting condemnation and failure) then you can joyously comprehend, experience and enjoy the truth that I delight in you, I love you, I celebrate you and I enjoy you… imperfections and all! Seeing other people (all people) through the eyes of Jesus and in the power of the Holy Spirit, will change your life and relationships more than arguably anything else in your life!
Actually, rather than having high standards of perfection for you, My desire for you is to know and experience My unconditional love and radical grace in the midst of your imperfection. Only there, as with the “Prodigal Son,” can you truly see My nature and what I’m all about.
The older religiously perfectionistic, joyless son in that story in Luke 15, doesn’t experience the joy of My unconditional love, grace and inclusion.  I’m there for him and love him… but he can’t see it through the darkness of his constant striving to please Me.
Let go of that! Feel free to mess up and fall short and in the process, enjoy My unconditional love, radical grace and unwavering inclusion!
~Love, Papa