Maybe this thing inside of me that keeps running back to my old ways is actually the mold from a seed of bitter disappointment that needs to be taken out. Maybe traces of it start to spread like cancer. I need to get it all out. Bitter disappointment in my present circumstances, past circumstances and fear of not getting future circumstances the way I want them. Bitter disappointment or fear. Fear of bitter disappointment, perhaps. Or maybe it has nothing to do with me at all. I mean the part about healing. Maybe it's not about looking inward but about looking out and up.
I get anxious when I sin too much, and I start to feel the heavy cloak of self pity take me in and wrap around me, zapping me of all energy to delight in God. Why is it that when I am weak I am sometimes JUST WEAK and nothing more?
“Humble yourselves … [by] casting all your anxieties on him.”
By casting my anxieties on Him?
So when I'm weak and anxious, throw that at God?
Would it make sense for me to throw anxiety at my mom or dad if I wanted love in return? Or do I feel more loved when I give them love and my good side, my selfless side? My clean side. That would require a deeper understanding of love. If I am to throw God my anxieties in return for love....how can I do that? I feel that at times when the temptation to sin is so strong I am unable to resist it. Simply saying I feel this or that to God does not suffice, there must be something deeper at work in me that overpowers my ability to throw my anxieties to God. Something in me that is keeping me from casting myself to His disposal and presence. Why don't I believe Him, and His Word, and cave into sin?
"How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?" (John 5:44 ESV)
I cannot believe God and His power if I am not seeking that as my goal. The deeper issue within me when I fall into sin is that I want glory from others more than I want to give glory to God. First, my goal in temptation must be to consider who is going to get glory from this particular situation, if not God then who? Myself. But do I really ever get glory? Maybe I get a copycat version of it, but history and experience has always shown me that the glory I get never lasts or satisfies. So how can I begin choosing to give God glory before a temptation to sin?
"but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:14 ESV)
I need to drink from this well and only after having drank from this well will I be able to choose God's glory over my own because it will satisfy me. But it says that it "will become" implying a kind of process or moment in time that it will occur. "Welling up to eternal life," also implies that it'll steadily rise and rise and rise until I drop dead in the physical and my spirit ascends to the eternal. So is the goal to be bubbling or to be dead and in eternity? The goal is neither to be bubbling or to be in eternal life because we can do neither since it is a drink we receive.
So where do we get this drink?!?!?
Who gives us this water? The person speaking said "I will give..." in that passage, which is Jesus.
But I already KNEW THIS.
Of course the answer is Jesus.
So the knowledge is not the problem then.
So here I am, feeling uncontrollable about my sins and my habits that are not centered on giving honor to God, but rather are centered on giving me what I want (honor to self). I always think, what could I do to resist this temptation? How could I convince myself that God is greater and be more satisfied in Him? So that I choose to live a God honoring life over a self honoring one? Because I do hate the sin, yet I keep falling into it. I don't want to be in a sea of my anxiety, weakness and ugliness! So what can be done for someone like me who feels like I am failing, perhaps even failing without the ability to choose anything else?! This sinfulness is a part of me, it is mixed in with my soul so that I cannot escape it. I admit that I'm weak all the time, I feel it, I see it in the face of my failure, but that is not the solution. I admit that I even KNOW Jesus is the answer but what is causing me not to turn to Jesus then? I'm a sinner. That's just the diagnosis. Jesus is the cure and Jesus is the solution. So what's the bridge between the two?
Answer: GRACE
Utter and complete, unfathomable, too remarkable, bright as sunlight grace --this blinding and painful grace to behold is the bridge between our sin and faith in Jesus. So stop thinking about what you need to do and think about what He has done for you! Think about what the words "my grace is enough for you" means. If His grace is not enough for you bring that anxiety to God!
John Piper's book, Battling Unbelief, said:
"Anxiety does not look like pride. It looks weak. It looks as though you admit you don’t control the future. Yes, in a sense the proud admit that.
But the admission does not kill pride until the proud heart is willing to look to the one who does control the future and rest in him.
Until then, the proud are hanging onto their right of self- sufficiency even as it crumbles on the horizon of the future."
I was shocked and blown away by understanding when I read this simple logical truth about what weakness is. Weakness is not a state of mind, it is a reality. The mental poison we delude ourselves with is the pride of either self sufficiency or self pity. Neither are from the attitude and belief (faith) that Jesus has the drink we need for our cure. Whether you feel strong or weak is besides the point. The central issue is where God stands in the midst of your position. In my case it is in the midst of my doubting if God is really there for me after I have once again sinned against him. I start to ask God what's wrong with ME? I use self pity and the acknowledgment of my weakness as the solution (or means of getting to it) rather than on faith in Jesus who has the water I need to open my eyes to see how satisfying it is to honor God more than myself.
Prior to sin (during the peak of temptation) I feel almost nothing but the strong urge to sin. I have tunnel vision and sin is all I see, all I want, and nothing else exists in that moment, at least nothing big enough to veer my attention from the sin I crave. I have a craving and it must be satisfied. If I am craving self approval I will go to whatever lengths to get it, and anyone or anything that gets in my way will get trampled--other people, my own health, my ministry, my time or my money, all depending on my type of self approval that I feel is most satisfying to me. (For some this is looks, money, awards, relationships, recognition, or Facebook friends).
So the diagnosis is me, and the solution is Jesus. The diagnosis is me, but so naturally I want to think the solution is me too. Me working harder, me trying harder, me praying harder, me wallowing in my weakness longer, or me thinking about me.
When this distinction of problem and solution become murky, there is a helpful way to discern the separation (given in the Word of God).
In suffering ask: is this shameful feeling (anger, humiliation, weakness) honoring God or not? And how might it be giving honor to God? Sometimes anger is righteous and honoring to God, but sometimes it is not. How might it be about my image and how others are perceiving me rather than about God's image and how others will see God from this? Where is shame God-honoring and where is it self-honoring?
When I feel the shame of my actions at night to an addiction or to an omission of doing something I felt I should have done, I need to ask is that shame God-honoring? Yes, because it is shame from recognizing that by my sin I am smudging the honor due to God in my mind. It is feeling the shame of how ugly sin is, and that God cannot be with sin because He is beautiful.
When I feel the shame of unworthiness to approach God for full forgiveness and restoration and even consolation is this God honoring? No, because this shame is actually belittling the mercy and grace that belong to God. This kind of shame is misplaced in that it does not bring honor to God's kindness, goodness, love, patience, faithfulness, and acceptance.
So is it okay to feel weak? Not only is it okay, it is the true disposition of every human being under the Creator and Almighty God!
What is weakness?
Our inability.
Our anxiety.
Our sin.
Our pain and desperation.
Our threshold.
Our lame and crippled legs.
Our lack of endurance or strength.
Our tiredness.
Our humiliation.
Those are all true. And it is a shame that we exist! We are so ugly after inheriting sin!
In those times, grace abounds in a glorious display of the beautiful gospel, for which we recognize as the power of God for our salvation.
To blindly, led by grace, walk in faith of the unseen but believed beauty of Christ, THEN I will be content for His power will rest on me during hardships and the heartbreaking pain of losing things I so strongly feel are what make me valuable, beautiful and loved: things like accomplishments, beauty, relationships, marriage, children, work, money, wisdom, endurance, and reputation. To ask God for the grace to believe that He is more worthy and more beautiful to choose to give honor to.
For the sake of Christ. Believing that if what is happening is God honoring, meaning it makes God look beautiful while I look ugly, then that is the beauty which is more true than the one I feel I am losing. That is the beauty of which I will inherit in the kingdom of eternal life.
Jmegrey
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