I often times think about the Christian life, salvation, and my life, trying to distill it down to it's most basic forms. I do this to try find a pin point; a place of motivation from my beginning to go to my end. It really involves being honest about myself and not trying to b.s. my way into an ever stipulated world where I feel better about myself, but a place where I cut the crap about where I am in order to move on. I think, it is important to strip away our excuses to get us down to the bedrock. We excuse ourselves with every identity label in the book. "I don't do that because I'm an introvert," "I avoid my neighbor because I'm busy," "I don't talk to that person because they have a habit of talking down to me," "I grumble about that person because they always 'look at me that way'," and on and on and on. In a society of ever increasing "identity culture" it's easy to forget our place before Christ and where we are and what we are commanded to do now that we are in Him. Now pretty much anyone who knows me and has had any discussion around this knows I am generally adamant about abandoning self reflection and introspection, but I don't really see this as the same. I look to see where I am excusing myself to elevate how I feel about myself for the express purpose of getting back to ground zero. I am full of pride, that is the root of all my sin, and that made me deserving of death. Others commend me to do that to find out the intricacies of myself; to find out more of myself or with the foolish thought that I have any ability to purge sin from my heart. It really ends, in my opinion, in a place where I am, whether directly or indirectly, feeding the root. That root is the extent of the power in my being, and it really just has the power to make death. Humility and Christian charity (love), is inherently outward focused. Even in 1 Peter 2, Peter even examples this perfectly in verse 21
...Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.
Christ gave up Himself for us. Zacchaeus gave up his pride and status to see the Lord, and so did the blind man in Luke 18. It's quintessentially a letting go of ourselves to cry out for mercy to the Lord of all creation. It is an outright abandonment of ourselves to be near Him. All my excuses for my sin are just impediments to seeing Him. I would say that if we can't let go of ourselves, seeing our real state (our identity which is really that root of pride), to give Him all we have, we will never let go of "the sin that so easily besets us" to seek out others; to love them and serve them as Christ's example has shown us. What do we think "die to yourself daily" and "pick up your cross and follow me" means? The call of the Lord is always to do that. It is really, in my opinion, the distillation of the work of the Spirit: to call us to that by showing us the step above, and then empowering us to do that. It is like a force like gravity and we fight against it like a cartoon person hanging to a root on the side of a cliff. The call of the Lord is let go of the root of sin, and only with the power of the Spirit we can. We don't believe He will take care of us if we do....but the truth is He always does. So I'm left with the psalmists call:
1To you, Lord, I call;
you are my Rock,
do not turn a deaf ear to me.
For if you remain silent,
I will be like those who go down to the pit.
2Hear my cry for mercy
as I call to you for help,
as I lift up my hands
toward your Most Holy Place.
Lord I need your mercy now more than I ever have. Give me the strength to abandon myself on my cross, and to love and serve You, Your people and those who don't know you. Help me by your Spirit, and remind me by the time I spend with your people and by the songs we sing of You.
In Christ,
paul
music for the week (as usual: no claim of being not "offensive" but it is really good):
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