| I was thinking earlier tonight about the profundity of the spiritual struggle we experience. I don't think I've ever heard it put as well as it was by A. W. Tozer when he said (and I won't remember exactly) that we are dealing with living spiritual tissue when we war against the flesh. To cut off sin is to cut off something that is attached to us. Everyone knows this, really. To give up something is to suffer loss even if one gives it up for something better. Loss is still experienced. I'm most vividly reminded of a particular night when I felt very deeply hurt. You see, I had come to habitually rely on something that wasn't capable of helping my deep need. It's like having a crutch because of a broken leg but no cast to set it in. I was getting by alright, but at the expense of healing. If I may extend my tangent a bit, my broken bone had hardened in the wrong way...hardly healing I would say, but it kept me going. Well, it kept me going until the utter vanity of my condition came to light and in such enlightenment, I could no longer ignore vanity. Yes, I was very hurt because I needed something, and the way I was looking to receive, though it afforded temporary relief of the need, was no deep healing. It's times like these when I realize the truth of Tozer's statement...that this is living, breathing stuff I'm dealing with here. The only difference between someone who is saved by Christ and someone who is not is surrender. You might try to pull that "faith / works" mess on me, but they cannot exist apart: faith means surrender. Genuine trust is that which separates the sinner from the saved, and trust alone. Given that this is the largest difference any two people can have, even to the point of spiritual death versus life, how profound and deep it must be! Yet, this is my battle in such times as I mentioned above, and I've gained some insight into that. The depth of my needs reach down into the very definition and identification of my self. This is of no surprise because needs are clearly Creator-given. They are universal, they are penetrating, and they have absolutely no concept of grace. If you go without water, you die. My need for water doesn't ask me how I feel. It's penetrating requirements force me to drink or die. The immensity of need itself is beyond my intellectual grasping and exceeds my capacities because I am an experiencer of need. One cannot master that which encompasses them; they are at the mercies of...fulfillment...external fulfillment from some source. So, here I am in my need, experiencing war waging within my members, a familiar war, a war involving the living, breathing tissue of my will, my dependance, and deep need, a war that is taking its toll on all of me...and I find such a strange reaction occurring. I feel the pull of the Lord to let Him in, but I resist with a very explicitly worded thought: "God....God, it just hurts so bad. I CAN'T! I just can't....it hurts too bad." Okay...seriously. Reality check here. How foolish can someone be? (at least that's my first perception). I mean...do I enjoy the pain? Ha, seriously. I mean, I don't put my hand on a hot stove and keep it there; then why would I continue in emotional pain keeping the Lord out of it? At this point, I'm conversing with Shannon about it all; and we both realize something very common. Sure, you don't hold your hand to the stove, but once it's burned, you sure do hold it! Ha! Wow. Self-preservation 101, hello! "It hurts! I'll take care of it myself! I don't know you very well, do you have any idea what you're doing?!" Oh how innocence flees when light exposes. That doesn't sound pitiful at all does it? No, it sounds stiff-necked. It sounds stubborn. It sounds like the most untrusting thing. It sounds like...Israel. Ew! Not the nation that went from bride to prostitute! Whew, 'tis the human condition, I'm afraid. I was really saying, "God, I can't trust you. I'm unsure of what You're going to do, and I just can't take that risk." Haha, I mean, it's easy to give money for a lot of people...especially in the churches that harp on it...churches with rich people who could give 90% but give 10% for formalities. It's easy for most to not use profane words. It's easy for many to not drink, not smoke, not "do drugs." But who can take comfort in their personal arena of need? What about the things that we would die without...or at least would want to die without? What about the vulnerable areas? That's where it hurts, and that's where trust is tested. I could rant and rave to you about money, about music, about sexual purity, about sobriety, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah...but I could also tell you the areas that hurt...yeah, they're not so easy, and I find myself holding onto my burnt hand saying, "God...NO! I can't! You just don't know! I've gotten along ok so far...You're just gonna make things worse!" Self-provision, self-preservation, self, self, self. Ouch. This isn't new. Real trust means you bank your highest chips on the object of your trust, not the easy ones. I am reminded of my lung surgery (this would technically be my third, I think, as I had two chest tubes before this one). You see, my left lung had this thing about collapsing, and...that's just not cool. So I'm on the table, and the doctor (after drugging me up...that's the only way I think I ever could've had the courage to do this) asked me to turn on my side and lift up my left arm. WHAT?! Are you kidding me? He's going to cut on my LUNG! And he just wants me to lift my arm and say, "Hey buddy, cut away!" Psh...this had some resistance, and I was shaking. I mean...I could feel him cutting, I could feel the blood running down, and I was just supposed to keep my arm out of the way? Well, with the drugs, I sure did, haha, but that was my ultimate realization of trust. I trusted that man with living, breathing tissue, necessary tissue. I took a risk and banked my highest chips on him. Luckily, he was good, and my lung hasn't collapsed since. This is how I think we all feel before God. We're broken people, we're malfunctioning. Our lungs are collapsing, and we just keep getting chest tube after chest tube, slapping band-aid after band-aid. But God wants to heal the problem. The only problem in His way is us and our trust issues. He's saying, "Can you please hold up your arm? It's gonna hurt a bit, and it'll be uncomfortable, but trust me, it needs to be done if you want to get better." It's our decision, I believe. Will we trust Him with that which matters most? God knows that we are dust, and I doubt that He mocks our fear or our shaking. The question is, will we let Him in? Will we stop covering and protecting the wound? Will we stop self-providing and give room and risk for another to step in? It's always been and will always be an issue of trust...trusting the providence of God in light of deep need is the profound and immense war. Scripture has a word for this: faith. It's so easy to say say...and this cookie cutter doctrine syndrome we have where everyone and their grandma knows all the right Sunday school answers can sometimes mask the true depth. Faith is the deepest and most fundamental challenge, and it can only be obtained from God...lest we forget even the man who said to Christ, "I believe! Help my unbelief!" Again, I believe in the goodness of God, and I do not think He mocks the humble and contrite no matter how pitiful and weak the person may be. He knows not the proud, but there's grace for the humble, and faith both leads to and stems from the source, the Vine, of Christ. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (especially Abraham) trusted God with the living, breathing tissue of need. I dare say that Abraham must have been shaking the night before he took Isaac to sacrifice him to God. Isaac had formed attachments to Abraham's heart. It's like those picture hangers you punch through the dry wall that spread out on the other side for extra support. It's like ripping one of those, like ripping a fish hook out of flesh. But how else do we escape the tyranny of things...the snare of attachment to that which will not give us what we expect from it? But I bet you Abraham probably never felt more free and whole in his life when God, pleased with him, provided the sacrifice. Isaac could never have saved anyone including himself; Christ could and did. And it is through this same trust, this same faith that Christ covers us. It is through this same faith that Christ unhooks our snares and heals us. It is through this same faith that Christ will finally raise, that glorious day when the world passes away and the lusts of it...for we will have but one desire :). But a very deep thing faith remains, and it is something to be cultivated in intimacy with the Lord. Intimacy is allowing someone into your weird little world and giving them access to the things that can hurt you. It is risk, but it is enlivening, and it is healing. Without intimacy, faith remains just another easy thing to say. Without letting go of the wound, no matter how scared, faith is not yet a reality. I sometimes wish the immensity was less, but it goes both ways. As the flesh is crucified with Christ, having the life and tissue of sin violently ended, how much more are we resurrected with Christ as new creatures! I so often fear that there must be a better, more immediate solution to my needs...something more like what I'm used to. As Shannon said tonight, God'll meet the need alright, but don't think it's going to be in the same way idolatry did. If it were, He would be an idol; but He is altogether different and works in ways that are altogether different. "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me." I want my life to now be lived by faith in Christ, a life of trust and intimacy, a life that believes He is who He says He is. I want to (scared as I may be) let Him close enough to my needs to heal them. I want to let Him in by trusting His word and living according to it. I want to change my ways according to His wisdom though it be uncomfortable and utterly foreign...I want to (scared as I may be) live by faith in Him. My prayer is the same for you :). Anyway, just my thoughts for the evening. It's midnight now, so I'm going to sleep! Goodnight everyone. -Matt |
