Wineskins

A moment of frustrating truth:

I am refusing to give God a few specific remote controls in my heart. 

In other words, there are things God has asked me to give to Him (since He wants everything), that I have found too exceedingly frightening to let go of because of my selfishness/greed and an obsession over the control of my self-preservation.  To give those things that I hold so tightly to will allow me to no longer be bound to them, because if nothing matters to me anymore except for Jesus then no matter what I attain or lose in life will make a difference, because things will be given to me and things will be taken from me, but God says He is always with us into eternity.  I would live so exceedingly confident because I would have the one thing that I needed for true joy and real love and intimacy and peace while all other things would and could come and go in and out of my life.  This I know is true and revelational, but knowledge is futile if steps are not taken to implement and apply those truths.  

As I was sitting at one of my favorite cafés (Jaan bai, an NGO run by a cool Aussie by the name of Tom) I sat there almost tangibly feeling the bubbling of a potent mixture finding those cracks in my heart. It was very much like the churning of cement in liquid form as it smoothly oozes over and covers all the little holes and cracks of a surface.  It starts out soft and watery, appearing harmless then very soon it begins to harden and once cement is hardened it is very difficult to break down.  This is very much like the process of our hearts becoming hardened.  It always starts out easy and smooth, we think things like "next time", or "I know this already", or "oh well, I tried my best", or "there's nothing I can do about that" and so on.  We are victims, or we are honest but lazy, and we let the oozing settle nice and easy over those areas we don't want exposed.  Then the more we continue to ignore it the harder those spots become until they are so concrete we find it way too difficult to even attempt at hacking at it. 

But good thing God is God, and there is nothing He cannot take down.  

But that does not mean it will not hurt.  It will hurt, and we ourselves are to blame for having let the hardness in our hearts continue to ooze in all the different areas as we ignored them.  Understanding that you are responsible for your sin and the difficulty in getting rid of it is essential to helping yourself become hungry and desperate for God and to see how good He truly is.  

One of my school leaders walked in while all this was happening (the oozing cement in my heart), and spoke to me gently.  I was honest with him (without getting too specific because I'm still afraid for some reason).  It was as if I just sat there defeated while he began to get a shovel and remove all the cement before it could harden.  His words were not just right and encouraging, but his demeanor towards me was so caring I almost got upset.  This guy, why did he have to start helping me, making me feel like a bad person (though he was doing the opposite and I was the only one making myself feel like scum), making me feel convicted to not let my heart become hardened.  It was difficult because I didn't want to pick up my own shovel, but to just stand by and watch became more and more difficult.  I cried, which I absolutely still hate.  Why do I have such a problem with crying in front of people?  Probably because I am one of those people who get annoyed at people who cry so much, judging them to be too emotional and sensitive.  Yet I find myself....to be THE MOST emotional and sensitive person before God, especially when face to face with my own sin and the grace God has for me by never changing His love for me whether I obey or disobey.  Understanding that He never ever wanted me to repent out of guilt.  He wanted to be sure I knew first how deeply His love for me is.  

God doesn't want my guilt.  I am learning that repentance is not a means to relieve my guilty conscious, and then going back to that sin and repeating a process of words without action.

  Repentance is humbling myself before God and before others.  True repentance is giving up a sin (especially the strong habitual sins that have built up a callousness in our hearts over the years) and then, in humility, choosing a friend (not expecting them to be perfect as we ourselves are not perfect) to go to 10-20 times a day, or however many times the thoughts of temptation begin to surface, and saying "hey I need your help, I've been having these thoughts of persistent temptation and I need you to pray for me."   THAT shows hunger and desperation to do WHATEVER IT TAKES to overcome sin and walk in holiness.  It's so humbling because nobody likes to feel like a burden or an annoyance to someone, neither does anyone ever really want to reveal how weak they are.  But we humble ourselves before God, NOT before people.  If you find that you cannot do that (commit to asking someone multiple times a day to help you fight the temptations you face throughout the day), then you're lying to yourself when you say you are hungry for God or that you hate your sin.  You probably, like me, just hate the guilt and shame and consequences of your sin, but the sin itself, whatever yours may be, that sin, you love.  

It was so disgusting and frustrating to see that I loved my sins more than I loved God.  Right now, I'm still not sure if I love God more than my sin.  I hate my guilt, but I love my sin.  And this morning my prayer, as I broke down crying (again), my prayer was that I would hate my sin, and love God more.  I am moved to do so when I remember that even when I loved my sin more than God, God loved me the same as when He chose to give His only Son to suffer and die on a cross to redeem me.  His love, that sacrificial and ferocious love, is the same regardless of my love for Him or lack thereof.  

And that kind of powerful love transforms me.  I fall madly in love with God all over again because of that love.   When I love someone I do what I know they want, not what I want.  God hates sin, and so I want to hate sin too.  But my love for God needs to go deeper, be way more intimate; I need more closeness with Him.  So I will seek Him more by taking desperate measures.  Being that person who asks my friend 10-20 times a day that I need them to stand by me as I fight this temptation, and rest assured that God gives us what we need to overcome temptation.  We need each other, we need counsel, we need to have personal lives of prayer and study the Bible, we need to avoid going there or talking to that person; we have everything we need to overcome temptation.  So it is left to the simple reality of "do you really want to get rid of your sin?"  

If the answer is "no", then ask the Holy Spirit to help you have the desire to love God more than sin.  Just be honest.  

I prayed this morning that God would change my mind about my sin.  I prayed "Lord, I hate my guilt but I still love my sin, and so please help me to hate my sin."  

Now I need to pick a friend....or friends, and through this I see how arrogant and self-righteous, prideful and fearful of man that I am.  Otherwise this step would not be so difficult.  Haha but I feel blessed that God has even helped me come to this meager degree of hunger and desperation to get rid of my sin and get to experience grace, His grace, that as my leader who spoke to me at Jaan bai said, "grace breaks all the rules".

God's love will transform you.

God is pouring so much into me, and the only way those words will remain in me is if I get rid of my old ways and habits of thinking and take on a new way of thinking.

22 “And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. For the wine would burst the wineskins, and the wine and the skins would both be lost. New wine calls for new wineskins.”

-mark 2:22

I can write and blab and speak all the right and convicting things, but "new wine calls for new wineskins".  I must get rid of my old self first.

J