according to the riches of His glory,
to be strengthened with power in the inner man through His Spirit,
and that the Messiah may dwell in your hearts through faith.
I pray that you, being rooted and firmly established in love,
may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God’s love,
and to know the Messiah’s love that surpasses knowledge, so you
may be filled with all the fullness of God.
(Ephesians 3:16-19 HCSB)
To know and to have knowledge is differentiated here by one thing: the former is a verb and the latter is a noun.
A verb indicates an action, a noun is a thing.
To know the Messiah's love is to be interacting with it experientially.
Whereas to have knowledge of Messiah's love is like owning a backpack you never use. You see the backpack, you even know the make and model of the backpack, and the backpack is your size.
However, without any actions with the backpack you render it pointless for the purpose you wanted it for--to go backpacking.
Knowing and knowledge of Messiah's love are as different as use and useless in their ultimate ends.
Knowledge is only as good as it can be applied, and......this is where things become messy for believer stuck in delusion.
Trying to apply God's love to our hearts, in order to be transformed by it, is impossible.
I repeat, trying to apply Messiah's love into our hearts is impossible.
So what can be done? How can we go from the noun-knowledge of Messiah's love to the verb-knowing through interaction of that love in action?
What can be done for the self-loathing and oblivion we endlessly discover?
What can be done with our struggle with sin and the way in which we know the good, but do not do the good?
What is our will? Do we not have free will to do what we will? And is our will the only thing that makes decisions? Clearly not--a prime example is anyone who has ever sinned or acted in contrary to what they wanted (their will). Last night my dad ate a bowl of ramen and didn't want to, because he knew he would wake up bloated the next day, but he still ate it--against his will. Likewise, I may come across a cookie, not wanting to eat it because I know it is not healthy for me, but I eat it anyway. It is my will to study right now, but instead I am blogging. Have you ever wanted to do something yet in actuality, did not follow through? So then, our decisions are not steered by our will alone, but by our character.
Why do we act in contrary to our will then? Because the deeper ontological issue is our character.
Philippians 2:13 says,
"For it is. God who works in you, BOTH to will AND to work for His good pleasure."
So it is the will and work.
Both the desire and the action that stem from our whole person, our character.
And by Whom are these controlled?
By God.
No amount of trying or even wanting to experience transformation by God's love will do anything, even if the desire and efforts are with good intentions.
Biblically, God alone is the transforming agent. We are transformed by His love, only when God's love interacts with us.
Oftentimes, I find that I am just not good enough yet.
Not good enough to lead praise,
Not good enough to get married,
Not good enough to be loved,
Not good enough to make money,
Not good enough to be good!
And so I try.
I try to be good, to be better. Sometimes that takes the form of praying more, reading the Word more, humbly submitting to my mentor (or my parents), or just creating wise safe guards for me to be able to resist the temptation to sin.
I fortify myself with this and that, and I think to myself, "good job, Jamie, you're doing well, making good choices, being proactive." *hooray for me.
While all of these are not bad (in fact they are very wise and helpful), they do not transform me. There is no amount of preparation, discipline or planning ahead that I can do to see myself "become good enough--good enough to lead praise, to get married, to be loved, to make money, etc.
Every good gift comes from God. Nothing I do will give God a reason to bless me.
And while that might make some immediately think to give up on trying to be good, the point being made is that God's grace and love is deeper and wider than you can ever imagine. But to know it means nothing for you--to possess knowledge of love as a noun is worthless of it never becomes a verb--if you don't experience it through interaction.
Most of our sins that escape our will to abstain from them have deep hidden historical and relational roots that the Holy Spirit knows all about. He knows us better than we know ourselves because He sees the thoughts of our hearts not just our head. And this is where transformation can begin, on a cooperative interaction with the Holy Spirit revealing the hidden filth driving our wills to act ...against our will!
The fact that God is the only agent of transformation, brings to reality the uselessness of our efforts in being transformed. Or in change.
You can't change a pile of poop by covering it with snow.
You have to expose the poop, take off all the "good" covering it, just remove the snow and reveal the shit under there.
Romans 9:16 says,
"So then it depends not on human will or exertion (for all you do-gooders out there), but on God, who has mercy."
Then when sin occurs in our lives, we don't try to justify ourselves by exerting "good acts" of kindness or serving or missions or giving--all that may help to alleviate the guilt (like alleviating the stench of poop by covering it with snow), but it will not remove the actual sin underneath, once the snow melts (and it always does) there's your shit again.
Instead of trying to be better or work harder at becoming good, the only way for us to be transformed, is to be vulnerable to the work of God. That's how bad our crap is! God is the only one capable of getting rid of it, in fact He got rid of its power of death by dying for us. Now, we are forgiven by ultimate means, but the experience of forgiveness comes by confession. To know, by interaction with God, that we have been forgiven is the way in which He transforms us. Experiencing the weight and depth of His rich and love-overflowing forgiveness for our wrongs, is to experience being rescued.
God says in Ezekiel 36:25,
"I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanliness, and from all your idols I will cleanse you."
He will do it. Him and Him alone. So then stop trying to change yourselves, and start opening to God by taking off those coverings of your sin.
John 8:32 urges us to look at the truth. The truth of our condition, our shit buried under all our "virtues".
"And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."
Stop trying. Start uncovering to the truth and know, by interaction, the love of the Messiah.
"For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast."
Eph. 2:8-9
Sometimes, all I can do is sit down or lie down or huddle in a corner (no, I don't really do that--mostly sitting...lots of sitting) and cry about the things in my heart that hurt me to think about, but that I don't want remaining inside of me, buried underneath the coverings. I cry about all my badness, my bad choices, my bad thoughts, my fears and worries, complaints and unmet wants, I sit there and just open up whatever I can to God because He see me through and through. He knows when I get up and when I sit down, He knows every word before it leaves my mouth, and He knows all the days that make up my life before I was even born (Psalm 139).
Because He made me! I love God because He first loved me.
And most of the time I end up crying uncontrollably like a blubbering baby. I feel so weak and helpless in those moments because I can't even control my heaves or the fact that this much crying will give me a puffer fish face the next day. I cry because that's all I can do when the crap of my badness surfaces, when all the painful memories, the hurts buried in my heart come to the surface it makes me feel so weak, and that weakness is enhanced by blubbering sobs. I don't like being so vulnerable but when I am God speaks love into my heart.
Or sometimes I feel nothing at all. I look at my crap and I hate it. But no tears come, and then I realize how much I liked the tears. But this time it's different. On these occasions my consolation of crying to release all the fear and pent up hurt is not there. This time it's just quiet. These times are both agonizing and deeply moving (because I get bored while thinking my sin should be convicting me to cry....where are those contrite tears?!). I am moved by Him. How He works in me. How my faith and His grace start to dance in a different setting. We go from the highschool drama stage to the still gaze of two friends on a porch swing.
It's remarkably surprising to meet with God on these non-crying levels, too. I'll admit sometimes I want to cry, because it feels good and tires me out, but when the tears don't come and I am there in vulnerability with the Lord about all the deeper issues in my heart...just sitting in the weeds with Him, I find that my faith is called upon to rise to the occasion. Faith to trust without feeling or preparing for the worst. Faith to recall God being my Father. And then He speaks in the stillness about something. Usually about something hindering me from getting closer to Him, because He is always wanting me to draw nearer to Him.
And all the world lays flat in comparison to the surpassing greatness of knowing God...just in this brief minute.
“Instead, this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days” — the Lord’s declaration. “I will put My teaching within them and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be My people.
(Jeremiah 31:33)
I struggle in sin everyday, and rather than going humbly before God in prayer for Him who is the only one capable of changing me from the inside out, I tend to think things like "Jamie, what's wrong with you? You should work harder at being good! Go to bible study! Get a good job! Change this, change that! Go give $100 to church! Feed the homeless! You should Do this, do that, and then you will become better, slowly, progressively."
Lies! All lies.
We don't do anything to change our deep rooted character--the issue is our hearts that control our wills. God alone stated that He would be the one to write His ways upon our hearts, and He would be the One to will and work for His good pleasure.
Nothing can prepare you for that. God in His mercy and deep love will take you down to lift you up.
May you find hope in these words, and may God meet with you right where you are.
I pray that He may grant you,
according to the riches of His glory,
to be strengthened with power in the inner man through His Spirit,
and that the Messiah may dwell in your hearts through faith.
I pray that you, being rooted and firmly established in love,
may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God’s love,
and to know the Messiah’s love that surpasses knowledge, so you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
(Ephesians 3:16-19 HCSB)
Jmegrey
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