We all have one or two perfectionists in our lives.  The ones that always squeeze the toothpaste from the bottom.  But perfectionism has – well – an ugly side to it.

I have a confession to make, I have to come out of the closet, come clean, by my very nature deep ingrained into my DNA - I'm a perfectionist. I like everything to be just so, everything. A place for everything, everything in its place. I mean how can you not hang the towel in the bathroom perfectly straight, come on how come the mustard isn't always in exactly the same place in the fridge door. It's tragic isn't it? Now in some respects it's not a bad thing, we need people like that in this world but perfectionism can be the scourge of a relationship because perfectionists use their perfection to condemn and belittle other people. It becomes a form of control. So what do we do when we run into perfectionists?

This week on 'A Different Perspective' we're looking at the faces that people sometimes wear and we do don't we? We put on faces to kind of hide what’s going on in our hearts. My face should reflect what's going on in my heart, if I smile I'm happy, if I cry I'm sad, if I have a frown I might be angry and that way you know what's going on in my heart and I know what's going on in your heart.

That's the theory and that's the way it's meant to work. But it doesn't always work that way and sometimes people put on faces or masks that kind of hide what’s really going on inside. And we read their face but we miss out on what's happening in their hearts and that causes confusion, it causes hurt, it causes descent, it causes anger.

We need to kind of get with it and begin to understand people at a deeper level and that’s why, this week, we've been looking at the faces that we wear and if you've missed any of the programs you can go and listen to them again online at www.adifferentperspective.org.

Now I was saying earlier this week that one of the things that I did for almost twenty years of my life was that I was a consultant in the IT industry and sometimes I'd deliver a report or deliver what I'd worked hard on and I'd get a bad reaction. And I'd think it was all about me when actually it was they that felt threatened, it was they that felt insecure and I needed to learn to read the terrain. So this week we've looked at the face of disapproval, which I've just talked about there; the face of over-confidence, which often hides deep insecurities; the face of aggression, which often hides a deep hurt; and today, today we're looking at perfectionism.

Where does that fit into the list? Why are we looking at that? Well perfectionism is a real insidious face because it proports to be one thing but actually, very deeply, it's something quite different. As I said at the front of the program I, by my nature, my very nature am a perfectionist. I used to have my favourite saying, "it's so hard to soar like an eagle when you're surrounded by turkey's".

Now perfectionism is different from perfection, two quite different things. My school motto was 'arguo quad argus' which meant 'whatever you do, do it well'. Now it's good to do our best, it's good to strive to excel, to achieve, to deliver, there's nothing wrong with any of those things.

I would encourage everyone to have a strong work ethic, to work hard to do the very best with their lives that they can do. That’s normal but perfectionism is when that striving, where that achieving, where that reaching perfection becomes an obsession. We have an eagles and turkeys mentality, we look down on the turkeys, we belittle them.

We use our perfection to dominate and belittle and marginalise other people. "How can you be like that? How can you not do this? That's appalling!" That's the sort of language that comes out of a perfectionists mouth and when you think about that it's a form of domination, I make myself bigger by criticising you and making you smaller, that's perfectionism.

It masquerades as something good, it masquerades as 'arguo quad argus' , 'whatever you do, do it well'. It masquerades as doing our best and striving and achieving but actually it's about domination and that's bad. Perfectionism doesn't mean to do well, it means that I'm trying to be better than you so I can be bigger than you so I'm more important than you are. And let me say, having been a perfectionist and addicted to this, it is a very, very powerful pattern of behaviour.

Now ten years ago when I came to Christ, I became a Christian I guess it's one of the first things that I began to see, that I couldn't actually go around talking about eagles and turkeys anymore and say that I believed in Jesus because Jesus loves eagles and turkeys. He loves us all and God began to deal with me, in my heart, about this spirit of perfectionism because the sense I had was that I have to perform to be loved. A lot of people, a lot of people live on that premise. In order for someone to love me I have to perform, I have to deliver, I have to do better and so I became a perfectionist.

But Jesus comes along and says, "no, no, no, you've got it the wrong way round. I love you no matter what, now go and be all you can be." Wow, isn't that a different way of looking at life, that's the Jesus way of looking at life. I don't have to perform at anything to be loved deeply by Him. I can go and sit in that red chair I have in my study and open my Bible and close my eyes and pray and spend time with Him.

And you know, it doesn't matter whether I succeeded or failed yesterday, we have that time together because He loves me and He died for my failures. And so over a period of time God dealt with me in this and little by little, grace sank in. Now my desire is still to do the best, I still love to do that but it becomes an asset instead of a liability.

Let me give you an example, each of our program series is available on CD at our website or you can write or, whatever and we've decided that our CD packaging should be quite professional. So Gary our assistant director, Gary Brown, designs the packaging and then he sends them to me and I refine them and tune them and improve them and we collaborate in this creative process together that we both really enjoy. Now, let me say, when I was a perfectionist I would have criticised him for not getting it right completely up front, I would have said, "How can he do it that way? Why did he do it? How come he didn't get that spelling right? How come he didn't get that word right?"

And I would have done that to feed my own insecurity, to make me feel bigger and better and more important. But now, now I realise Gary has some skills that I just don't have and he knows I have some skills that he just doesn't have and we really enjoy that creative process of bouncing things around together and building them and developing them, it's really good fun because we've got complimentary giftings, it's a team experience that we both really enjoy and I have to say, the outcome is much better than if he did it on his own or I did it on my own.

So my desire to get all the words right, to have it perfect, to get it just so, that's still there but it's there in a loving and a supportive way, in a team player way rather than in a dominating and critical way. That's the difference between perfectionism and perfection and when perfectionism is out there it masquerades as perfection but it's not that at all. It's a face of perfectionism and perfectionism is a prison, it's like a treadmill. Jesus came to set the captives free, Jesus came to get us out of this eagles and turkeys attitude and His unconditional love leads us out of that prison.

I no longer need to be bigger by making you smaller and so, if you suffer from perfectionism, I trust that Gods really ministered into your life and if you're dealing with perfectionists, I trust that you have a better understanding of what’s really going on when you see the face of perfectionism but understand the struggle in the heart behind it.