I seem to have this
weird sickness that tries to infect my joy by keeping me apathetic towards
everything this beautiful life has to offer. Amongst all the miracles and
common blessings, my mind fights violently to keep me in a place of dulled
excitement. I often experience the nauseating feeling that a dark loneliness outweighs
the lighted comfort our Savior provides. Because we cannot tangibly experience
Christ, it is easy to get tired, it is easy to take our eyes off Him, and it
easy to think that life is a series of mundane events that have no
significance. These easy grumblings of life can quickly take over ones outlook
and if we’re not careful it’s a place that we can get trapped in.
Looking for anything
that can help us climb out of our entrapment, we turn to those things that have
no significance, those things of distorted value, and those things that falsely
seem to bring us closer to contentment. I cannot tell you how quickly I am
swayed into thinking there’s got to be something more to life than deepening
our relationship with God, how quickly I turn to substances or others for
relief, how quickly I’m exhausted in trying to remain positively hopeful.
However, in searching for these other things, our pits grow deeper. The walls
we’re scaling grow taller and our temporary happiness widens the wounds it was
so desperately trying to fill in the first place.
Along with my
apathetic sickness, I have haunting thoughts of unbelief. I am tricked into
thinking that engaging with God makes no difference and that my love for Him is
a fabrication of reality. Prayer makes no difference because God is in control,
He is greater than I, and He will carry out His plan regardless of the life I
choose to live. While some of that may have a small bit of truth in it, the
accuracy is not on point. Prayer and the choices we make do make a difference.
Nothing about our relationship with God changes Him, but it does change us, and
it changes how we view Him. While these changes may be harder to see in ourselves
rather than others, they are changes that comes in subtleties. They are changes
that lead us into a greater understanding and changes that can sometimes be
hard to describe. These sometimes-miniscule changes to our lives shallow the
walls of discouragement, they make them easier to climb, and they eventually
lead us out of the shadowed pit into the light of the Promised Land.
“Because of His glory and excellence, He has given us great
and precious promises. These are the promises that enable you to share His
divine nature and escape the world’s corruption caused by human desires.” (2
Peter 1:4) These promises that enable us to share in His divinity, because He
is living inside each one of us, gives us authority to “heal the sick, raise
the dead, cure those with leprosy, and cast out demons,” in His name. (Matthew
10:8) These promises allow us to “joyously
draw water from the springs of Salvation.” (Isaiah 12:3) They are given to us
so that, joy may be in us, and that our joy may be made full. (John 15:11)
These promises from God, and the many more I have yet to write about, never
leave us, and they are never broken. For these are the truths that live in us
and will be with us forever. (2 John 1:2)
While we learn how to stand on these promises, we must
also learn how to trust them. Though these promises from God are infallible,
our engagement with Him makes them living realities. Though the Lord freely
gives, it is our choices, our prayers, that allow us to experience more of His
greatness, and there is none more greater than He. For myself, I have to pray
for the desire to follow Christ. I have to pray to love our Creator more. I
have to pray for excitement, for knowledge, for discernment, and for
understanding. I have to pray for leadings and for strength. I have to pray to
remember. I have to pray for help in keeping my eyes on Him because the
hauntings and the sickness are just as real as the glories. I have to pray and
unfortunately I wish it came easier to me.
As we crawl into this New Year, I’m praying to experience
more of these promises I’m continuing to discover. A life with Christ, though
the strangest I’ve ever known, is also the sweetest I’ve ever tasted. It is the
highest I’ve ever been and the most loved I’ve ever felt. While the depths of
our walls may seem never ending the love of our Savior is deeper. Growing in
our trust and stretching our faith is not an easy process, I am the first to
testify of this. But may I also be the first to testify that a life without God
is a life without purpose. May I be the first to testify that the things I am
able to do through Him are things that I could not have done without Him. May I
be the first to rejoice in His greatness and one who never grows lukewarm or
cold in His promises.
Pushing into His love and increasing in His knowledge may
bring sorrow, but it will also bring a life that is considerably more
significant than any one we could live on our own. Christ, being all that
matters, is the One who created everything, the One who is timeless, the One
who sustains it all, and the One who cares about you far more than anyone else
can, far more than anyone else can understand. “Now
all glory to God, who is able, through His mighty power at work within us, to
accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. Glory to Him in the
church and in Christ Jesus through all generations forever and ever! Amen.
(Ephesians 3:20-21)