The "Changed by Jesus" series features stories about how Jesus is working through the ministry of Mars Hill Church to change lives. If God has used Mars Hill to transform your life, email your story to testimony[at]marshillchurch.org. by Anonymous Author I asked Jesus into my heart before I can even remember. In the years since, however, I have lived a life motivated by nothing more than an aching desire to be perfect, beautiful, and righteous. I armed myself with knowledge and convictions and lived a very moral, introspective, and ultimately fear driven life. I read the Bible daily, but did not hear that Jesus’ goodness replaced the need for mine; what I read and heard was conviction, the need for it, and the power of it to safeguard and cultivate a life that pleased God. I paid lip service to things like Love and Faith, but actually lacked any relationship to real trust and heart. All I saw in everything and everyone were shortcomings and this drove me deeper into a quest for "right-thinking" and "the truth" so that I at least could live it out. The centrality of Myself in my spiri-tual life was totally reinforced by my college studies. Satan is so subtle! In my focus on changing myself, I was completely deaf to the call of Jesus’ love. Looking back, it’s funny how afraid I was of evangelism. I tried so hard to justify my lacking in that spiritual gift. The truth is, I had nothing and no One to share! But I thought I was a Christian! After college I got married, of course to a Christian, but to a Chris-tian who had truly been hunted down and saved and regenerated in a dramatic way by the love of Jesus. He is a man of love and action who loves me to a fault, but over the past 6 years, I have "loved" him more to probe and correct his weaknesses than to express my enjoyment, love, and trust for him. Having never really experienced God’s justifying and sanctifying love, how could I possibly extend that sort of love to my husband? Love is quite simply a language I have been late in learning. God was pursuing me through all of this, hammering on my hard heart, little by little. It took 17 or so years for my own sin to be-come clear to me, to ripen into real need for a Savior. I couldn’t be saved from of a life of criminal behavior because I’d been so careful and ‘good.’ Instead, I’ve been the dangerous sort of person who idolized their own capacity for holiness and perfection. I read the Bible with eyes on me. I was ardently and blindly and deafly wor-shipping The Best Version of Myself possible, until over the past six months, God gradually opened my eyes to His glory and His good-ness and the perfection of His work, and I’ve come to recognize my deepest desire clearly for the first time: the love of Jesus. So here I am at age 28, realizing that I have been born again! Rea-lizing that I have shed a skin of self deception and come out a new being. It’s like I have been given permission to love—really love!— people as they are, in their imperfections, and it’s only through love that people will have any hope of desiring God. I am no longer stuck in a never-ending race to point out and eradicate error and sin, no longer on a quest for righteousness and perfection; I’ve found Perfect Righteousness (or rather He found me!) and now I am a soldier in the trenches for His fame and preeminence. Praise Jesus.