While I can receive ninety and nine compliments, it’s the
one complaint that I ruminate on and chase after. When I’m lying in bed, sleep
eluding me, it’s not the memories of love, admiration or the friendship of
others that float into my head. It’s the mistakes and moments of shame I’m bust
conjuring like angry spirits. The worst-case scenario sticks to us like velcro,
and our tendency to believe the worst affects everything, even how we believe.
Eisephobogesis
If you let the bible speak for itself, it becomes a ten-ton
nuclear explosion, leveling your cities of shame and guilt. It’s sixty-six
books of filet mignon for you starving soul. Over and over, we’re given the
promise that we are loved and whatever we needed to get to God has been given
to us as a gift. (To be clear: not a trade or an IOU, not a loan or a favor.)
Yet, you give me one confusing verse or chapter that seems to be saying
something else and I become frantic with fear.
I tell people God loves them in what I write and talk about,
but I don’t believe it. I spend my days worrying over the minutiae of my every
failure, wondering in the back of my mind if this is the sin that will send God
running the other way. And if I run across even the tiniest hint in Scripture
that my fear might be true, I know I’ll latch onto it and drive myself crazy
obsessing over it. Instead of interpreting scripture as a whole, I take it
apart and read my worst fears about God into it.
It’s easier to stay away from God at that point. Even
knowing the Truth, my fears loom large. They seem to punch my faith in the gut and
stick around to tease it about its flabby gut. My trust in God and his perfect
Promise is overturned by my personal
failures to live up to my personal
standards. And you won’t accept a gift when you think you have to earn it.
Losing With a Winning
Hand
To even admit all of this is a fearful thing. Because there’s
part of me that won’t let go of the idea that it’s about me earning God’s love.
And there’s a cackling jerk in the back of my mind that whispers that this kind
of doubt means I’m not His. I can roll my own eyes at that, think of a bunch of
verses to show myself that it’s wrong, and I still fear there’s a chance it
might be true. It’s crazy--I’ve got twenty-one and I’m asking for more cards.
What’s a neurotic, faithless Christian to do?
Repent. That’s a start. I know that words carries a lot of
baggage, but it’s just recognizing that my weak little arms can’t actually lift
the load of true belief; that the thing about God loving me because he loves me
is true and my crazy bs, lunatic doubt is me judging God to not be that loving.
It’s me admitting I’m wrong and God’s right.
I need, more than anything, to then throw myself over and
over onto God’s grace. I have to let go of the controls, point my belief at
God, and trust his Holy Spirit to do his work in me. Because, the crux of the
problem is really that I want to do it myself. I want to be (and at the same
time, fear that I am) responsible for changing me.
I fear that giving up control will mean that I have zero
control over how I turn out, and that scares me. But, because I won’t let go, I
live in fear. I’ve stopped trusting the One who casts out all fear. It’s a sick
little circle.
But Jesus is the only hope I have, and the pain of holding
on has grown greater than my need for control. I’m always a poor substitute for
God, (to say the least). But he loves me enough to pursue me to the bottom
(which I usually have to hit before I look up). But I’m thankful that when I do
look up, he’s always there.
-Chad
-Chad
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