Are you healthy or sick?

What is it that caused you to believe and have faith in what Christ has done for us? What in your life guided you to that end?
Reading through a friend's blog and hearing about how he found the face of Jesus the most portrayed through the actions of felons and addicts living in the most run-down town in CA made me start thinking.
Now before I get started, I'm not saying that the examples I use are black and white scenarios for every single person. I'm not stereo-typing here.

Where do you see the life of Christ the most? In well-off people, who don't have to struggle for anything? Or in broken, humiliated people, who have nothing? (I hope I'm explaining myself well enough that you'll understand. I don't think I am, but let's keep going.) Was it the Pharisees (whom He called "white-washed sepulchers") Jesus came for? or the prostitutes and sinners?
"Then it happened that as Jesus was reclining at the table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were dining with Jesus and His disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to His disciples, "Why is your Teacher eating with the tax collectors and sinners ?" But when Jesus heard this, He said, "It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick. "But go and learn what this means : 'I DESIRE COMPASSION, AND NOT SACRIFICE,' for I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners."" (Matthew 9:10-13).
Throughout the Bible, you see it over and over and over. Jesus always worked through the weak, simple, humble, and basic people. If a person were "righteous", why would he need Jesus? That person would already have "arrived". Jesus was there to teach those who needed it. "It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick."
Those people who my friend talked about in his blog, those people were sick and Jesus showed them the way. They knew the love of Christ and it changed them. I myself knew of Christ since I was a child, but I didn't start understanding what the big deal was until I was so sick! I didn't understand what He was trying to tell me until I was at the end of myself. I was falling down to the bottom of the barrel, I was living for myself and this world only. I was doing what I wanted to do, and yet I was so completely unhappy that many of you may not understand. I was completely hopeless.
Not until I realized that I was "sick" was He, the physician, able to help me.

Following that train of thought (if you were able to keep up with my random mind), when and how are we able to grow in our relationship with God? After we fail. That's right, I said FAIL!!

Me --> Failure --> realize my NEED --> study the Word of God --> renewal of my mind through the Holy Spirit by the Word of God --> growth ------->(back to the beginning)

If I don't recognize my failure and my need, If I don't recognize that I am sick, then I don't move, I don't grow, I don't heal. I become a stagnant pool of slime. (not really all that appealing, is it?) If I become stagnant....I'm not really all that useful to God.

Only by believing and understanding God's truths will I obey Him and thereby allowing Him to live His life through me, conforming me to the image of His Son (which, in case you haven't heard, is so awesome I don't even have a word great enough to describe it).

Are you a white-washed grave? Or are you the sinner who recognizes your need for Him?

What does your testimony say? Is Christ seen through your life, your actions?

Are you healthy or sick? Righteous or a sinner?