(Hebrews 12:2,3 NIV (emphasis added)
(Romans 7:18,24,25 NIV)
(2 Corinthians 4:16-18 NIV)
Like most followers of Jesus I know, I have encountered more times than I’d like to admit in which the messiness of life and the struggles of the day-to-day grind have left me exhausted, bruised, and limping. On days such as these, words like “discouraged” and “depressed” seem like understatements at best, and when I reflect on the painful moments of my journey, the thought of throwing in the towel and raising the white flag seemed- at the time- like a very attractive option… However, as I peer into the rearview mirror of my life, I recognize that it was during these hardships and struggles that God was growing and cultivating my character, teaching me important life-lessons, building my testimony, bestowing wisdom, and ultimately transforming and refining me into the person He created me to be according to His perfect will and ability to work all things together for His glory and our good.
That being said, When these times of resistance were at hand, and the mountains I stood before seemed to have inflated to such colossal proportions that I simply could not see past them- Despite the countless hours I had devoted to the study of scripture, the hundreds of sermons I had heard preached, those I had preached myself, the Bible studies I had attended, prepared, and led, the Greek and Hebrew word studies that I conducted, the passages of God’s Word that took me days and weeks to memorize, exegete, meditate on, and teach, and even after the innumerable times that I had witnessed God- with my own two eyes- move, heal, transform, and work undeniably in my own life and in the lives of people around me…despite all of this– I could seldom be observed viewing these moments of yuck (my precise theological commentary: yuck) in the light of God’s perfect plan, will, or timing when I found myself attempting to navigate the complexities of life’s curve-balls unsuccessfully. My proclivity, rather, in the thick of it, was to allow my thought patterns to begin the toxic drift into self pity and despair because I too often bought into the false notion that it was my own strength, ability, or intellect on which I must rely to fight the battle and emerge victoriously. Before I knew it, I would begin reverting back to a lesser-enlightened, foolish, and self-absorbed mindset which would inevitably spawn and fuel an attitude that was all the more toxic and potentially devastating…..
This flesh-driven attitude wherein I somehow possess the ability to convince myself that the world exists for me and that I have somehow been cheated or short-changed out of something better and that God is holding out on me, and therefore, cannot possibly be “good,” is one we are all acquainted with and have the potential to be in bondage to if it is not actively and intentionally prepared for, recognized, and counter-attacked in some serious active warfare because the simple truth of the matter is that we (you and me and everybody else on this planet) were born into a sinful nature- what The New Testament refers to as the “old self”, “old man” , or our “flesh”-and this sinful nature is opposed to the things of God. Even after we are born again by grace through faith into the new life Jesus offers and become a “new creation”, our sinful nature wants desperately to creep back up and cause us to live, once more, for the things of this world and to gratify the desires of the flesh, and will make every attempt to convince us to give-up.To quit the race. Throw in the towel. Retreat from the good fight of faith. To compromise our integrity and distrust the promises of God that we have built our foundation on… and oh! how embarrassingly swift the descent can often be from the Throne Room of God experiences (or “Ah Ha” moments- if you will) to hitting rock-bottom in the deepest of darkest valleys where one can begin to feel as if God has forsaken and forgotten and that there will be no end to the pain and hopelessness that accompanies such a sense of abandonment.
If you, like myself and many other Jesus-loving, Bible-believing followers out there, have spent any amount of time in the ring with your own sinful flesh and it’s worldly desires, you are undoubtedly aware of the tiresome roller-coaster ride this can be. I personally spent years trying to change, grow, learn, achieve, and fight- arguably for all the right reasons and always under the “Jesus” banner- but always to no avail…. For me, the one fatal error that I was habitually making was not found in my motivation, source of information, or desire for transformation, but rather, inwhom I was directing my focus…
You see, I wanted more than anything to change. I was well aware of what the Bible has to say in regard to the importance of the personal change, growth, maturity, etc. of the believer. Not to mention that I had a spouse who was (understandably!) growing increasingly more impatient waiting on me to get my act together, become the head of our household I was supposed to be and own my God-ordained role as spiritual leader to our family all while she herself was experiencing spiritual growth in (what appeared from my point of view to be) leaps and bounds, thus leaving me behind in a cloud of her spiritual-overachiever dust….. It seemed, however, that the more I focused on my flaws, shortcomings, and imperfections and the harder I tried to tackle and improve these undesirable areas of my character and the poor habits I had become so accustomed to, the worse I got and the MORE I needed to change! I was in a vicious cycle that looked something like this:
Honest self-evaluation/and-or/convicting “motivational-speech” from extremely persuasive wife, get really motivated to be a better man, try hard, work harder, do more, overload mind with information, do more, see minimal improvement-or none, do more, get discouraged, ask God why I can’t seem to change, worry, despair, self medicate with drugs or alcohol, cry,worry, cry more, stay exhausted, consider giving-up, repeat…..
The problem wasn’t my desire, work-ethic, motivation, or willingness. I began to view my situation much in the same way the Apostle Paul did in Romans 7:18 which reads: “For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.” and later, in v 24, He goes on to add: “What a wretched man I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” I know how you feel Paul. I know how you feel…
No, the culprit which was reducing my efforts to little more than an a carousel of complacency and desperation wasn’t my willingness or motivation. Neither was it my lack of persistence…It was my FOCUS -or, more precisely, whom my focus was on… Notice in every step of that counter-productive cycle- where was my focus? ON MYSELF. The harder I worked, and the more I tried to change- to fix myself- the more I seemed to get worse, and the more I found myself needing to change. As a result, I stayed exhausted and discouraged most of the time, which eventually gave way to worsening addictions, deepening bitterness and resentment, and a whole new bag of character issues that came along for the ride.
It was during one of the darkest hours of one of my toughest battles for sobriety that God entered into my mess, met me right where I was, and spoke directly to me through Hebrews 12:2,3 and changed the way I thought, believed and understood the scriptures and, more importantly, Jesus’ centrality in the Biblical narrative…this revelation and paradigm shift was the beginning of my healing process, which ultimately changed my life, saved my marriage and prevented me from reducing everything I cared about to rubble in the wake of my brokenness and destructive behaviors.
***now,I want to clarify; I am not saying that these were the magic words that made life easier all-of-the-sudden, nor that I became magically transformed instantly and lived happily ever after, riding off into the sunset to some picturesque utopia- not yet anyway… I am still very much imperfect and I still struggle with more than I’d like to. I still have more questions than answers and I suppose that I always will on this side of Eternity…it has been a long, painful journey from then until now, but it was only after I got my head wrapped around the crux of this passage that I began to improve, change, and experience spiritual growth***
“2 Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 3 Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.~Hebrews 12:2,3 NIV (emphasis added)
Let us fix our eyes on JESUS….. what a fantastic suggestion that someone should make!
That’s why I love my Bible, because the Bible points me to Jesus, and it is in Jesus alone that I am truly free. When I finally stopped looking at myself–At my problems. At my failures. At my shortcomings. At my inadequacies. At my yuck– And instead began to shift my focus and fix my eyes on Jesus, I learned something very, very quickly; Time spent in the presence of The Savior will ALWAYS result in personal transformation. Being in close proximity to our Creator and Redeemer will inevitably overflow into every area of life- and cannot but result in positive change. When this shift happened in my own life, I began to notice that all my junk- all the burdens I was trying so hard to shed by my own futile attempts at living out what I thought the scripture was instructing ME to do- began to fall away. When I stopped going to the Bible for the purpose of finding myself– “where do I fit into the story, what is it saying to me, and what it it instructing me to do?”– and began approaching the text simply to seek Jesus and enjoy the rest He offers in His presence, I began to notice- literally all throughout scripture- how often the responsibility/burden/attention is shifted from me and onto Jesus, where it belongs. In fact, the gospel is made mention of right alongside every one of what Biblical scholars refer to as the “Imperatives” in Paul’s New Testament writings. Why? Because Paul can’t write about the need to forgive one’s neighbor without pointing to how Jesus has forgiven us, or command that a husband love his bride without reminding us how Jesus loves His bride, The Church…
That is why I believe we seriously need to ditch the “Bible as instruction manual ” metaphor. For until we stop treating the Bible as if it were about us and what we are to do, rather than about Jesus and what He already did, we will always read it wrong. As well as minimize The Holy Word of God to merely another glorified self-help book from the camp of some bad form of humanism.
Self-improvement for Jesus is not the same thing as improvement because of Jesus, and operating in the first will inevitably leave us feeling weak and discouraged. But if we resolve to fix our eyes on Jesus, Hebrews 12:3 says that we will not grow weary and lose heart. 2 Corinthians 4:15-18 expresses the same truth differently and has become what some would call my “life verse” for this particular season of my journey. It is the words of these verses that I shall leave you with. I pray that they would encourage and strengthen you deep within, and that you will continue to chew on them in the days to come:
16 Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. 17 For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 18 So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. (NIV,emphasis added)
further resources:
~Galatians 5:16-18
~Philippians 2:13, 3:12-14, 4:8
~Colossians 3:1-4
~John1:36
~”Changing Change” Sermon by Pastor Judah Smith of The City Church in Seattle, WA http://youtu.be/qOXp2Mpecvw
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