I want to write even when I am in a low place, a place of some deep-rooted sense of abandonment and rejection; a dark place where my past failures or people who have hurt me try to define who I am, try to pull off my "new wineskin" with the old one, the familiar one, the self-condemning one, the prideful one, the immediately gratified one, the hopeless one, the fake one, the scared one, the untrusting one, the self-reliant one, there ready to smother me again. Where so much confusion arises, questions emerge regarding the legitimacy of my relationship with God, the reality of God; where apathy tries to make me saunter aimlessly toward sleep.
However, I know, or feel strongly convicted, that I have light, and the light I have breaks any darkness I may find myself in (whether during temptation, during sin, after sin, while desiring sin, or feeling shameful and guilty of sin), all the while I am reminded that I have the light that makes the darkness dissipate. It's not some chant or prayer, it's not an act of kindness that releases the light. There is no prerequisite. Light is there. So it's choosing to bring the light into the darkness. It's always a choice, we were created by God to choose.
John 1:5 says
"The light (Jesus) shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it."
This world runs contrary to what Jesus says. He says give up everything to Him and you will gain everything! He says die to yourself and you will live forever! He says to consider others before yourself and you will be provided for. He says that you will have joy during suffering! The light makes no sense to the darkness.
John 1:9
"The true light (Jesus) that GIVES light to every man was coming into the world."
Anytime we are given something we have the choice to take it or not take it. We are given gifts or given insults, but we choose if we take those things to keep. Jesus desires to give us Himself, the light, but He doesn't force us to take anything because He wants us to want Him (as anyone who has ever been in a loving relationship knows; it's always miraculously sweet to be wanted by the person you love so much). Bargaining sucks out all the intimacy in a relationship, thinking I'll do this so you give me this......but I bargain with God all the time, still, even now I caught myself bargaining with God.
I hadn't fully faced it before, but over and over I have heard my thoughts say something like this:
"God You are so good, and I know You have the best for me..."
Then without really looking at what drove me to those words (because they are true, but God is always about the heart) I saw that the end of that sentence continued: "so I'll keep trying to be better so that You'll give me the best future husband, kids, writing career, international itinerary, and anything else I am unaware of that will make me happy." The motivation to "repent" or strive more courageously toward Him and away from sin was to be given things in my future. It was about me. I was bargaining with God. I have been bargaining with Him, and seeing that just shakes me up. How all this time He knew, He knew exactly that that was what I had been doing; that I was bargaining with Him. He was patient with me. He loves me ferociously, evidenced in that He gave His Son to step down from His perfect presence, His throne, and onto earth, where people stab others in the back, steal other peoples' wives, go sexually rabid, and contemplate suicide. So it makes sense why He is so patient with my conniving heart. His love for me is vigorous! Always at work against the things that try to turn me away from Him, because apart from Him He knows,and even I know, that I will suffer exceedingly. Father God always outsmarts the devil. As my good friend put it:
"I don't get the enemy at all. I mean, he KNEW God, they hung out- there is no way Satan wasn't aware of how awesome and powerful God was and yet he rebelled. Why did that seem like a good idea at all?"
The enemy is a puffed up idiot.
I am so empowered by the precision and finality of that often overlooked, yet so obvious fact.
So one more time, and probably many more times to come, I pray that I have a heart that stops loving sin. I pray that I exercise my will to choose what brings life. I pray that I would want God just for being God and not because I'll get anything else in return. I pray to love God even if that means I have the worst life, a life filled with suffering, loss, pain, rejection, physical deterioration, whatever may happen to me, I want to love God just because He is God, He is good, and He loves me. To love Him purely.
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Some previous thoughts I had earlier...
Psalm 51 is the epitome of genuine intimacy with God. David says:
"For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me."
I, too, know when I walk contrary to what my Creator Father tells me to do or not do. I know so well that my sin is always before me!
"Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a WILLING spirit, to sustain me."
To grant is to ask for contribution or help, to want to WANT a will that chooses God. That may sound nonsensical : to want God to help you WANT to choose Him. But David wrote this, I think, saying "God show me more of who You are because I am after You, I am seeking You, and the more of You I see, know and understand, the more clearly I see why I want to choose You!"
All God has to do is show more of Himself and all the evidence, motivation, overwhelming sweetness is there to "grant" or contribute to our wills choosing Him. Which in turn looks like a change in the way we choose to treat people, choose to spend our time and money, choose to live our lives! Everything begins to change, I would think, once you go from choosing to seek Him to then falling madly in love with Him back.
I can choose to seek God, and I pray that I would be unrelenting in my seeking! I don't know if I truly love God, but the more I see Him the more I want of Him, because He is God, He is good, and He seems to really really love me.
J
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