“Practice makes perfect”, so goes the saying.
Aiming for Christlikeness, in the sense of fully mirroring Jesus’ faultless nature, is likely a reach too far. Still. Every believer can go, and is welcomed to go, a meaningful distance in narrowing that gap.
The late Brennan Manning stated with refreshing candor: “When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and I doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. . .”
A Franciscan priest, and author of *The Ragamuffin Gospel, Manning noted that God’s gift of grace brings to us: “Power to believe where others deny, to hope where others despair, to love where others hurt. This and so much more is sheer gift”.
The priest further lays his heart bare in characteristic self-disclosure, “My deepest awareness of myself is that I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ and I have done nothing to earn it or deserve it.”
In A.W. Tozer’s list of qualities he found reliably present in the nature of God, noted that one of them is God’s Immutability. God’s nature is reliable. He doesn’t change. God loves, and he loves without deviation. His love is immutable, always in “on” mode. “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases” (Lamentations 3:22)
So, we ask the question. Do I wish to grow to be more like Jesus. . . that is, to love as he loved and called us to love? Or, short of this, could I bring myself to sincerely whisper, “I want to want to love in this way”?
Either position can be a perfect place to begin and to proceed forward from.
©2025 Jerry Lout *The Ragamuffin Gospel, Brennan Manning **The Knowledge of the Holy, A.W. Tozer