Are You Killing Yourself Trying To Be Perfect?
I used to be the world's most dedicated perfectionist. I'm talking full-blown, no-holds-barred, sweat-through-your-shirt perfectionism. And I had Bible verses to back it up … or so I thought.
"And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men." — Colossians 3:23
I latched onto that word heartily and ran with it. Right off a cliff. In my mind, "heartily" meant perfectly. It meant excellence at every turn, spotless execution, and absolutely zero margin for error. Good enough? Not good enough. Better than good? Still not good enough. I was the woman who proofread her grocery list. Twice.
I toiled. I panicked. I cried. I expected the same impossible standard from everyone around me, too, and trust me, they were not fans of that. I was building my whole life around a perfectionism that I had somehow convinced myself was holiness. I compared my work for the Lord to the spotless, unblemished sacrificial lambs of the Old Testament. No spot. No blemish. No grace.
Funny thing about that. We don't live in the Old Testament.
Somewhere between my third anxiety meltdown over a slightly off-centered graphic and my genuine panic about a typo in a ladies' Bible study handout (oh, how I wish I were exaggerating), it finally dawned on me. We live in the age of grace. The perfect sacrifice has already been given. Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, has already been offered on my behalf. God is not standing at the altar waiting for me to bring a flawless sacrifice. That bill has been paid in full.
So what does God actually ask of me now? My reasonable service. My best, whatever that looks like on this particular Friday with this particular body in this particular season of life. And here's the part that absolutely shook me in the best possible way: sometimes my best is a broken spirit and a contrite heart. "The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise." (Psalm 51:17) Did you catch that? God will not despise my brokenness. He accepts it. He welcomes it.
My best today is not what it was ten years ago. Chronic illness and a whole heap of stress have ensured that. There are days my "best" is crawling to my desk and getting a few paragraphs written before I have to lie down. There are days my "best" is whispering a prayer because I don't have the strength to say it out loud. And you know what? God accepts it. Every single time, without docking my score.
Now, about that word heartily. I finally looked it up. The Greek word is ek psychēs, which literally means from the soul. From the soul. Not "to perfection." Not "without error." From the soul. It's an attitude word. It means doing the work with your whole heart, motivated by love for God rather than fear of failure.
You cannot do that when you're white-knuckling your way through a to-do list, terrified that something won't be perfect enough. Perfectionism doesn't produce heart-driven work. It produces stressed-out, joy-depleted, relationally exhausted people who have completely lost sight of why they were working in the first place.
The Apostle Paul puts it another way: "For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." (2 Timothy 1:7) Fear is not from God. Perfectionism rooted in fear? Also not from God. The peace and power and love that come from simply offering Him your genuine, soul-level best? Now that's from God.
So today, friend, I'm giving you (and me, because this is still a daily struggle) permission to let go of perfect. Lay down the unreachable standard. Bring God your best, whatever that looks like right now. Bring it with your whole soul, for His glory alone, and watch how He takes your cracked and imperfect offering and makes something beautiful out of it.
He always does, and He always will.
🔍 PULLING BACK THE CURTAIN: A Peek at the Study Behind This Post
The overarching idea for this devotion developed during my morning Bible study on the lizard, as odd as that sounds. As it typically does during my studies, one interesting fact led to another, and I found myself exploring the idea of perfectionism. The real spark for this devotion was the single Greek word hidden within a very familiar verse — ek psychēs (from the soul) tucked behind the English translation "heartily" in Colossians 3:23. As I dug into it, I discovered the word has nothing to do with excellence and everything to do with motive. That discovery changed everything.
Here's how the study unfolded:
Start with the trigger verse. Colossians 3:23 was the anchor. The question worth asking was deceptively simple: What does "heartily" actually mean in the original language? A Greek lexicon (Strong's Concordance, G5590, psychē) revealed the phrase ek psychēs — "from the soul/inner being." Immediately, "do it perfectly" collapsed, and "do it from your whole soul" emerged in its place.
Follow the contrast. If "heartily" is an attitude word, what's the opposite attitude? Reluctance, obligation, fear, performance-driven anxiety. That contrast led straight to 2 Timothy 1:7 ("God hath not given us the spirit of fear") — a natural companion that reframes perfectionism as distinctly not from God.
Dig into the Old vs. New Covenant thread. The perfectionism-as-sacrifice idea opened up a rich contrast between the unblemished lambs of Leviticus and the finished work of Christ. A quick cross-reference study of Hebrews 10:14 ("For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified") and Hebrews 9:26confirmed the theological backbone: the age of grace means the "perfect offering" requirement has been fulfilled — in Christ, not in us.
Search for the unexpected verse. Rather than defaulting to a familiar grace passage, a keyword search for "broken" and "contrite" in a Bible concordance (Blue Letter Bible is a wonderful free resource for this) surfaced Psalm 51:17 — the discovery that God doesn't just tolerate our brokenness; He explicitly says He will not despise it. That's not just comforting; it's theologically stunning.
Let the application crystallize. The devotion concept locked in when the Greek root of psychē was connected back to my personal story: perfectionism isn't heart-driven work — it's fear-driven work. The two ideas formed the spine of the entire application section.
⏱️ Total study time: about 90 minutes though, full disclosure, at least 20 of those minutes were spent staring at the ceiling, wondering why I didn't figure this out years ago.
The beautiful thing about Bible study is that a single word can crack open a passage you've read a hundred times and show you something you've never seen. You don't need a seminary degree, just a concordance, a curious heart, and a willingness to ask, "But what does that word actually mean?"
Grab your Bible, pick a word that's been nagging at you, and start digging. You might be one Greek lexicon entry away from your next breakthrough.