I wrote this past week about how God used my community group and overall experience at The Journey to make me aware of the stagnancy that has prevailed in my relationship with Him for years now. Because of many complicated struggles in my life, I allowed my focus to be diverted from the one place I should have looked for the solution to those struggles. Thus, I made a decision during the earlier part of this week to begin the process of learning to spend more time with God, reading more of the Bible, and being more faithful to church and school work, all the while forsaking those desires of the flesh - in which I have found refuge and costly satisfaction for years now. I sought out to trust, with all my heart, that God is truly all that I need to be completely and wholly satisfied.
I won’t lie. This week has been really tough. Quite honestly, I have even found myself in moments of intense depression, mostly at those times where I stubbornly resolve to not allow my imagination to run unrestrained into sexually inappropriate thoughts or to not indulge my flesh by viewing innapropriate websites online. In fact, I think that the overall sense of bitter loss that I was feeling was due almost wholly to the fact that my flesh had full knowledge of my decision to starve him to death. And he was fighting hard.
Amidst this struggle between my spirit and my sinful nature, I often came to a point in my heart where I would be filled with anger toward God, inquiring as to why He would allow me to endure such difficult circumstances when I had indeed chosen to seek him more devoutly. Should my decision not be rewarded with faithfulness, manifested as peace and ease of passage. And it is here that I began to realize a very important truth to which my previous lifestyle of sinful inconsistency had blinded me: my temptations this previous week were not so incredibly strong (and at times, almost debilitating) because God was “teaching me a lesson”. They were not even so strong because I was swimming against the waves of this world, though I was. The reason that they were so strong is because I had learned to satisfy my soul with sin. It became my food. It became my drink. It nourished me. It sustained me. And now, choosing God and at once denying my flesh its food of so many years, it only makes sense that this transition would begin so difficultly.
After revealing this to me, God, in his faithfulness, guided my mind months back, when I began working out and eating better. Even then, that choice to begin being healthier began terribly. In fact, I even recall during that time feeling much of the same sense of loss that I’ve felt during this past week. It was only weeks and months into the new choice that it revealed itself as a much better and more fulfilling choice. I believe that transitioning from the world to the Kingdom works much the same way. At first, it feels like you’re doing something so contrary to nature, indeed, something that nearly paralyzes the soul. And then, after weeks - after months - after years, you forget the pain of the change and begin to wonder how you ever could have lived any other way.
To quote the great Christian philosopher, C.S. Lewis - “We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
I choose the sea over the mud. I just wish that Mr. Lewis would have informed us that the journey between includes some mountains, a few rivers, and some incredibly deep pits along the way. Ah well. I’m packed and started off anyway…
SRay
