Striving or Thriving?

Perfection is impossible here on earth. You will never be perfect or live a perfect life. Perfect means to be complete and whole: complete and lacking nothing essential. We will not be perfect, or complete, until the Lord returns. Yes, it is our goal to become more like Christ everyday, because he is the depiction of perfection, but God doesn't expect us to be perfect apart from the Lord. God is in the process of making us perfect through santification, but we will not be complete until the day of the Lord. We don't see anywhere that God commands us to be perfect in our own strength. You see, if we try to be perfect on our own we begin to strive towards something that is completely impossible.
God does, however, tell us how to live a pleasing life for him. The word "pleasing" means to take someone's [someone being God's] wishes into consideration in deciding how to act or proceed. God tells us some ways to please him throughout the scriptures.

Colossians 1:10
"...walk in a manner worthy of the LORD, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God."
In this verse we see that to please the Lord we should bear fruit and increase in the knowledge of God.

Hebrews 13:6
"Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God."
This verse tells us to do good and to share what we have.

"This is great and all Hannah, but I do all these things. I am a good person and I give to the poor. Oh yea, and I also give my tithes." What I am getting at is this; are you just striving to live a "perfect" life, or are you thriving on the opportunities God gives you to please him? I know that too many times in my life I am just going through the motions. I will do all these good things that make me look like a great person, but am I really making the most out of every opportunity to show and share the glory of who God is?

Be real with God, guys. He is not asking for perfection. He is not asking you to strive for an unattainable goal on your own. He is simply asking you to please him by thriving on opportunities. Let conversations go further than just, "hey how are you?" How about we start being concerned with the stark reality that the person you just said hey to may be headed towards a path of destruction in an eternal hell. That is thriving on a situation. Do something crazy for the Kingdom. When you start caring less about the approval of others and start fearing the Lord, you will start thriving and stop striving.