Should we grovel?

I have a problem, or so it may seem. I can't grovel before God. I just listened to a sermon by a well-known preacher that I highly respect, but this time, I just couldn't agree with some of what he was saying. He was talking about being careful about how we approach God, that when we pray, we need to make sure we are not being flippant, but that we are giving God the reverence He deserves. Now, I fully believe God deserves our complete adoration and respect. I am in no way saying that we should take for granted what He has done for us. However, for most of my life, I have prayed the penitent prayers over and over and over again, thinking that the sorrier I was, the holier I would become. I felt like I needed to cry repeated tears over the price that Christ paid for me, or I wasn't genuinely penitent and thankful. I don't believe that any more.
No one can compare to God, not by a mile! In and of ourselves, we are too tarnished to come in the presence of a holy God. If we try to approach God in our own strength, then yes, we should grovel. We should shake in utter fear!! BUT I am not tarnished any more!! I've been paid for, washed clean, purified and stand blameless before God! I am not approaching Him as a condemned sinner but as a redeemed saint! If I grovel, if I weep and moan and cry about how evil I am, am I not spitting on the very blood that has cleansed me?? Am I good enough to stand before God? YES! Because I've been redeemed. I've been bought. I'm not a slave anymore, so why should I continue to act like one? How in the world does that honor the God who gave His own life so that I could stand confidently before Him?
I stand in awe of God, but I can no longer live afraid of Him. He is not out to get me. He is not measuring each and every one of my thoughts and deeds to see if I'm good enough to claim as His own. He's already measured me, found me lacking, and paid the immeasurable difference so that I can be His. No amount of weeping, begging and/or self loathing will make me any more His child. That's why I can approach Him with confidence, trembling not in fear but in awe of His majesty, crying, not in pain or remorse, but in joy at the incomparably deep, deep love of the God of the universe, who loves me enough to call me His child.

Posted this on Facebook on Sunday night, but I wanted to re-post it here, so I can have all of these types of posts in one location. Who knows? Maybe someday I'll write a book about my adventure :-).

It really sucks to be sitting in my recliner, minding my own business, enjoying the stillness of the evening and suddenly feel the squeeze on my brain and know that soon my world will become a very, very dark place. I have been told that my battle is spiritual and that I need to get right with God (Been there. Done that. Standing redeemed and uncondemned before Him, thanks to the immeasurable gift

of His Son. You can condemn me if you want, but the fact of the matter is you're wrong.) I've been told my problem is emotional. Alright. Judge me for that then. I'm sure that will knock some sense into me and make it all better.
In all honesty, though, why is it so hard for people to accept that depression and other mental illnesses may be largely physical?! If you haven't struggled with it yourself and experienced firsthand the havoc one's body chemistry can wreak on a person's life, at least read up on it before you judge. You may be surprised at what you find.

Along my recovery journey, I have discovered that I have some pretty distorted world views. One of the major ones I have just recently become aware of is that I behave as if the world is as it ideally "should" be, rather than as it is.
In an ideal world, should people be loving and accepting? Yes.
Should they be forgiving? Yes.
Should they be kind? Yes.
Should I be secure enough to withstand any kind of personal attack because I know that my value lies in what God thinks of me and not in what others do? Yes.  

But the fact of the matter is that no one can truly love unconditionally. People are often not forgiving, and many times are unkind, and words and attitudes DO hurt me. So I can continue expecting the world to be a place that it is not, and try to force it into an ideal mold it will never fit it, bringing myself considerable grief and pain along the way, or I can accept the things I don't like as part of life, and take the steps I need to take to protect myself from them.

Gabby told me a couple days ago when she was upset because James was getting attention for something and she wasn't: "Mommy, I don't want to accept that life isn't fair!" Me neither, baby girl, but if we don't, it's going to chew us up and spit us out, because whether we want to accept it or not, it is what it is. We can chose to beat our head against a wall, or we can accept it and move on.