Christianna Hellwig
We are those who live neat, tidy little lives: no drugs, no alcohol, and no murderous tendencies.
All goes well until we reflect on our tidy existence and realize that our lives are far from perfect. We've returned to that bad habit which we've struggled with since childhood. It's manifested in different forms, but it remains the same heart problem.
In the morning you make a resolve: "No more, Lord, I'm done with this. Help me conquer it." But it doesn't work. It never works...deep down in your gut, you know it. Sure enough, that evening you're back at it, and you go to bed with a guilty conscience, ashamed to pray even though you should.
Can you relate?
If so, then I'm writing to you. I'm writing to myself. I'm writing to all of us who have discovered that the heart wants what it wants, and it usually wins the day.
For many of us, this besetting sin of ours is not even really pleasurable in itself. It's more like a narcotic. It dulls our senses and keeps us from having to think. It distracts us from reality and draws us more into ourselves. It's dangerous, and we know it, but we can't stop partaking.
So what do we do about it? What is our part in all this? Is God asking us to do something of which we're not capable? We know better than to drag the "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me" verse out of context and apply it as a self-empowerment mantra. In fact, we're sick of people quoting it to us that way.
What we want is a fix, and that doesn't appear to be happening.
Spiritual Mindedness?
It's easy for those of us who struggle with sin to think of our minds and hearts as two neatly separated compartments. After all, if only our hearts weren't leading us astray, we'd be fine, right? Many of us secretly long to be "Vulcan Christians," we want the logic of Christianity to so triumph in us that we never let our feelings dictate our actions. After all, that's the problem, isn't it? Those nasty feelings!
Not quite.
Had we minds of steel, our hearts could still persuade us, because ultimately our minds are directed by our desires. Think about it this way: let's say you play an instrument or sport. Even when you don't feel like it, you push yourself to practice: the same moves, the same piece, the same serve, the same fingerings, until you get it right. If you don't play sports or music, perhaps it's daily exercise. Maybe it's keeping your house clean. Whatever it is, you have to keep working at it day after day. It gets tedious, but you keep working at it.
Some days you question your decision to take on that sport or instrument, but you push through your irrational feelings of the moment and keep on practicing. Realize this same willpower allows you to fall into that embarrassing sin of yours time and time again.
If it were simply an issue of willpower, we'd all be little angels by now because we all have the willpower to do the things we truly want to.
The problem, then, is greater than we realize, and the solution is greater than ourselves. Only God can change our hearts. Only God can fill our minds with His spirit. We know that, of course. The question we ask ourselves, though, is, "What do I do?"
Cease striving...completely backward, I know.
I falsely believed that before I could converse with the One who covered my sins with His righteousness, I needed to cover my sins with my righteousness. Ultimately this pride led me to believe that I was capable of making myself right with God.
Can an ant measure up to a human? Can the tiny wayside flower put itself on a level footing with a giant redwood?
And yet I, a created being, believed that I could measure up to the Uncreated One.
Friends, we have no recourse in our lives, but our Creator. Colossians 2:13 says "When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions."
So, again, I reiterate: the first step is to cease striving and cast off self-righteousness.
"Cease Striving and know that I am God;" Our Creator proclaims in Psalm 46:10, "I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth." He doesn't stop there, look at verse eleven: "The Lord of hosts is with us; The God of Jacob is our stronghold."
God is the One who will help us through, not us. He does not help those "who help themselves", he helps those who humble themselves and surrender to His better judgment.
That leads me to my next point.
The root of my pride was not bad behavior, but good deeds.
One of my favorite authors, George MacDonald recognized this difficulty when he wrote,
“However strange it may well seem, to do one's duty will make anyone conceited who only does it sometimes. Those who do it always would as soon think of being conceited of eating their dinner as of doing their duty. What honest boy would pride himself on not picking pockets?”
You see, at the root of all my actions was the conceit that I could hoof it on my own. I just had to work a little harder, I just had to do a little more, and the more pride I took in the things I did manage to do, the more I slipped in those I didn't. I tried to go at it alone, and I was failing.
Before James tells us to resist the devil, he tells us to submit to God.
"Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you." ~ James 4:7
It turns out, that at the crux of it all, I wasn't ready to surrender all to Jesus. I didn't want to let Him lead, or give Him control of my life. I am a person who is terrified of making mistakes, who longs for perfection in every area of my life. God is calling me to focus on Him, the embodiment of all perfection, the source from whom perfection springs, and forget about myself and my own striving.
Dear sisters, I must forget about that stubborn sin and turn my eyes heavenward. I must gaze upon God's glory and stop trying to do it all by myself. In that action, I will begin to destroy rebellion at its core, and it will not be me, but He who is doing it.
In Practice
When we step back and allow God to work in us, great things begin to happen, but oftentimes we realize that we really don't know how to do this. How do we step back and let God take the reins?
Pray when you don't want to. You know that moment after you have indulged in sin; when you feel overwhelmingly guilty, irredeemably dirty? You don't want to pray right then, in fact you are afraid to. If you act on this fear, you are right where your prideful heart wants you to be. Most likely it will be that very guilt which drives you to commit that sin again, and again. Don't wait. The moment you feel unwashed and miserable, get down on your knees and spill it out to your heavenly Father. Ask for strength to resist temptation.
Psalm 32 says: "When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; My vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer. I acknowledged my sin to you, and my iniquity I did not hide; I said, "I will confess my transgressions to the Lord"; And you forgave the guilt of my sin." (vs. 3-5)
Tell somebody about it your besetting sin. The most persistent sins are usually the ones we keep hidden; the ones we're ashamed to tell anybody about. If you're ashamed to tell someone about a persistent sin, it's a good clue that this shouldn't be one of those just between you and the Lord. He gave us the church and our fellow believers for this very purpose, to sharpen each other and encourage each other to have minds set on the Spirit Find a mature believer whom you can trust, spill all the gruesome details, and at very least ask for prayer and accountability. Hold nothing back. James 5:16 says, "Therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much."
Spend time thinking about others. The prideful heart is self-absorbed. If our thoughts are focused on ourselves rather than others, and it's so easy to begin that downward spiral when we're constantly thinking about how we feel, and what we want. It's another matter for prayer. Find ways in which you can spend more time focusing on others, spend less time in conversation speaking about yourself. Try and interest yourself in someone else. When we are other-focused we are less likely to be drawn into destructive patterns of pride and sinful addictions.
In Philippians Paul says, "Do not merely look out for your own personal interests but also for the interests of others. Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who although He existed in the form of God did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men." ~ Philippians 2:4-7
Christ emptied Himself for others and we are called to do the same.
In the end, my exhortation might be summed up in the first and last verses of a beautiful hymn by Kate B. Wilkinson:
May the Mind of Christ my savior
Live in me from day to day,
By His love and pow'r controlling
All I do and say.
May His beauty rest upon me
As I seek the lost to win,
And may they forget the channel,
Seeing only Him.
Christianna Hellwig is a professional violin, voice, and piano teacher to the capital city area of North Carolina where she lives with her family of ten. Time that she does not spend teaching or composing music is spent writing, singing, doing things with her brothers, baking, hiking, reading, dancing, or any similar activity. Christianna's goal is to live her entire life for God's glory and in so doing, add value to the lives of others. Please submit any questions or comments for Christianna in the contact form below.
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