Post-screwup musings

The worst part of all this is that when I do, almost inevitably, screw up, I spend the next day or two focusing on my failure. I dwell on the "woe is me, I'm a worm" factor, instead of the "be at peace you are forgiven" factor. And usually, this leads to a deepening of the cycle. I choose to take door #3 and intentionally dull and suppress my conscience so that I can continue doing what feels good for the moment, which causes me to move away from God. I'm determined not to let that happen this time.

late-night realizations

Last night I figured out what my problem is - why I can't seem to shake this. I keep trying to do it all on my own. I'm not relying on God. And I realize it too, I just don't do anything. And I'll make excuses about having to get a good devotion or something like that, when all I have to do is read my Bible and pray... It seems like so daunting a task sometimes that I don't know where to start, but I need to anyway. So to quote Switchfoot, "the sickness is myself".

"Again 11-4-00

As I looked over the battlefield today I was reminded of what we were fighting for. I thought of all of my loved ones. When I started thinking about my daughter, I was overwhelmed. She can be so much like me... the way her heart breaks with every injustice. She prays like everything depends on God, but then lives like everything depends on her. [emphasis added]" (quote is from the liner notes of Flyleaf's latest album "Memento Mori")

That's me right there (well, excepting the fact that I'm male). I somewhere, subconsciously refuse to accept that I NEED to rely on God. And after a few days, I pay the price for it.

Reply to comments

Reading the comments on my post, I feel like I want to address a few things. First, my posts do not contain any "Oh woe is me! I'm a terrible person!"-type self-deprecation. The post most of that comes from is about the thoughts and feelings associated with what I'm dealing with. It's a logical thought, and it's a darned good spiritual attack. But see, I don't need to be legitimately saying that I feel like that. Sure, I messed up, and I'm as messed up as anybody else, but I'm made righteous by grace through faith in Christ. So those posts aren't so much how I legitimately feel, they're venting the stuff I'm dealing with. Second, I'd like to clarify my beliefs as far as heaven: being good does NOT get you into heaven. "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." - Romans 3:23. We've all screwed up, which means that we're not perfect, and the only way that our actions could get us into heaven is if we were perfect, because God hate sin and is perfectly just, so if we sin, we'd get the just punishment for sin. "The wages of sin is death" - Romans 6:23a. And note, that's not just "oh we die". I mean, we do, but it's also eternal separation from God in Hell. So then, how do we get to heaven? "...But the gift of God is eternal life, through Christ Jesus, our Lord." - Romans 6:23b; "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, no man comes to the Father but through me." - John 14:6 (Jesus speaking). It's acknowledging that we're screwed up and beyond hope, believing that Christ died for all of our sins (that means me, the recovering porn addict and hypocrite down to the worst serial killer) and so the punishment has already been given out. But because he rose from the dead, we can accept the gift that he offers us of righteousness - not based on what we deserve, but based on grace. That's how we get to heaven.

John-Mark

Today my pastor preached the last sermon in his series from Colossians, and he spent about 10 minutes at the end talking about the people that Paul names in his closing remarks, and one of them struck me. See, there's this guy by the name of John-Mark who accompanied Paul and Barnabus on their first missionary journey. But about halfway through, for reasons unknown, John-Mark deserts them. Then, Barnabus wants to take him along again on their second journey, and Paul flat-out says "No, we're not taking him with us." However, later on, (in Colossians) Paul mentions him as giving greetings and says to welcome him if he was to travel to Colossae. Then in II Timothy, Paul requests them to send Mark to him because he was "helpful to me in my ministry". The reason I recount this tale is that I feel alot like John-Mark. Regardless of what some of my friends would say, it's not being good that gets you into heaven, and despite the fact that they think I'm a "good person", I'm really not (more on this topic in a bit). And I spent a fair amount of my life ignoring God. Sure, I acted the part, but I "deserted". And now I'm coming back.

Assurance of Salvation

So last night, I was sleeping absolutely horribly (read: tossing and turning for hours while trying to sleep), and my mind wandered - as it usually does - and I started thinking about one of the things that I normally struggle with. I'm always feeling like a failure whenever I screw up, and I inevitably start questioning my salvation. I start thinking "If I'm a christian, then I shouldn't be screwing up this much, this consistently... Maybe I didn't say the prayer right. Maybe I didn't really mean it. How do I know if I really mean it or if I'm just trying to use God as a help-line?". And man, it bites. As a little background: I prayed the prayer that I point to as my saving prayer (when I'm confident in my salvation, which seems like it's less and less of late) when I was 5. I've always occasionally questioned "How do I know I'm saved?" since then... but not quite like this. I've prayed several additional prayers for salvation, and quite a few that would probably be saving prayers if they were prayed by a non-saved person (although not necessarily prayed in that context in my case). I'm confident that this is just spiritual warfare now, but during the attacks, not so much. And the most annoying part (and the part that, thinking about it as I write this, makes me think it's an attack) is that I don't get the urge to pray to God for help and salvation again during these, I get the urge to give up. To decide that I'm not actually saved, and to walk away from God. I get the feeling that I'm just straight-up unworthy of salvation, and God's gonna pass me over even if I pray - which I know is an outright lie. The best thing was that last night, when I was thinking this over, I had a serious "thankyou God!!" moment. All of a sudden, John 10:28 popped into my head: "I (Jesus) give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand." Now I just need to remember that verse when I'm feeling like I'm not saved and unworthy.

Post-Christmas thoughts

Well, Christmas is over, and for some reason I'm feelin pretty crappy. And I think I might have realized part of why I couldn't believe that Christmas was here already... I was wanting to have all my issues solved, and have my relationship with God fixed by Christmas. It's a major holiday in terms of Christianity, what with it remembering Christ's birth, so I unconsciously decided that I should have everything fixed by then. And every day i realize that this isn't something that I'm gonna fix within a couple weeks. This is gonna take a MUCH longer time than that. Months, years... I might struggle with this for the rest of my life for all I know. So now, all of a sudden, I've got this crappy feeling in the pit of my stomach, that I was attributing to random guilt over something I was considering doing (that wasn't bad anyway... I'll probably write about that later...) but now I think I've figured it out. Somewhere along the line I had that thought planted in my head - I need to get my life sorted by Christmas. And then I don't so now I've got this guilt and shame because I haven't. That, or I ate too much lunch or drank too much Coke. Ah well, merry Christmas!

Christmas Ramblings

Christmas 2009 is rolling around soon, and it seems like for the second year in a row, it feels like it shouldn't be Christmas yet. It seems like there's no way that it's already December, and that I'm already through 3 rows of my advent calendar. It doesn't seem like Christmas could possibly be in one week from today! Despite having all my Christmas shopping done, all the presents wrapped, and the praise team at church practicing Christmas music, it still doesn't seem possible. What follows is my semi-late-night ramblings on why that might be, at least in my case.

Our society puts out messages about what Christmas is about - the "true meaning" of Christmas. Depending on the TV station, this could be any number of things... love, family, charity, new beginnings. Or, in between 10 minute sections of our favorite Christmas movies, rampant materialism.

As a Christian, I know intellectually what the "true meaning" of Christmas is - it's a celebration of the birth of Jesus. So, because I know better than what all the messages are telling me, I don't get sucked into the rest of it... So why is it still so hard for me to get into a Christmas mood this year? Well, I think I know the answer for me, but it's not something I'd have ever considered if someone had suggested this in previous years. The realization I came to is that it's because my relationship with God is pretty crappy right now.

From what I can tell, to celebrate something, we have to be happy about it. To celebrate somebody's birthday, we have to care about that person. To celebrate a holiday, we have to care about it. To celebrate the birth of Christ, we have to care about Him. If our relationship with God isn't right, we can't truly celebrate. We're either gonna buy into the "inspirational" meaning of Christmas put forth by the movies on the Hallmark channel, or the materialistic meaning put forth by anybody who has a product to sell - or end up with a case of holiday depression.

Christmas can thus be used as a kind of measuring stick for our relationship with God. If we find it easy to focus on Christ during the Christmas season, and to truly celebrate, we're doing something right. But if it's not, it means that maybe we're not as close to God as we should be. And I don't know about you, but this provides me with something to work on this Christmas season.

Blog related note: I'm hopefully gonna actually update this now.