We are not our best or worst moments. We are the moments in between.

​Our identity is not anchored to our best or our worst moments. We live in between them.

That's pretty powerful.

How much of my life do I spend letting success tell me I'm better than I think I am, or letting failure tell me just the opposite?

How much of my life do I get consumed with pursuing some goal that I think will show the world I'm great, and how much of my life do I spend hiding from the world because I feel like some bad day or mistake told me I belong in the basement?

Some days that feels like the balancing act of life. We spend life trying to undo or recover from moments that didn't go so well, or chasing some dream we think will forever put the low moments in life behind us.

To me it's pretty amazing that God saw this balancing act coming. He knew the most important part of our lives here on earth was the "in between." And God knew the biggest hurdle to us living our best in between lives was us beating ourselves up over our worst moments or getting too full of ourselves in our best moments.

So God made a couple of things clear to us from the get go.

One, we are all full of low moments. God said life is going to be challenging and you are all going to make boneheaded mistakes. He said I've got your back in the challenges and I'm going to spend zero time beating you up over your mistakes - so you shouldn't either.

And two, God said if you're following me your futures all look identical. You're going to die and then you're going to spend eternity with me.

God said I don't need you drug down by yesterday or overly consumed with tomorrow. I need your attention in the here and now. Because God seems to think if we beat ourselves up too much for what happened yesterday or get too caught up thinking we're going to be a big big star tomorrow, then we're going to be completely distracted from loving our neighbors today.

Too often that's what our best and worst moments are about. They are distractions. Maybe that's how the devil keeps us thinking about ourselves. Maybe he's afraid if we quit living in our worst and best moments, we'll start living our in-betweens with the focus God created for us.

God created us to focus on loving others. The easiest way to lose sight of that is to have our sights fully focused on ourselves. Our best and worst moments are always inviting us to focus on ourselves.