Thursday, January 13, 2011

Peaks and Troughs

Life has really had a lot of ups and downs lately. Mostly by my own hand, mind you, but I have been left wondering by it all.

C.S. Lewis wrote about peaks and troughs in The Screwtape Letters, and I've always agreed that life does indeed seem to consist of these up and down cycles.

I just didn't imagine they'd come so quickly, so deeply, or be composed so entirely of my own doing.

See, I can't say that I struggle with my faith in the sense of those words that most people speak them. I believe quite firmly in my God and in Jesus Christ. But I engage in behaviors, outwardly and in my mind and heart, of which I am deeply ashamed. In addition, I feel I am a very weak pray-er, and that I really don't read the Bible enough, or with consistency enough.... especially for someone who leads a Bible study group. Ugh.

And thus, while I am indeed very blessed and I thank God that my life has many high points, there are lots of lows, lots of troughs, and I can say that many are connected to everything I wrote about in that last paragraph... that distance I create between myself and the God I say I believe in.

Many Christian blogs would right about now throw in a happy ending, and sometimes that frustrates me, because that feels artificial to me. But you know what? We do have a happy ending. We do have a God who loves us enough to descend to our earth, take on a human body and walk about among us, get to know us, feel what we struggle with, overcome what we struggle with, and for everything we've done wrong, die on a cross so we wouldn't have to die in punishment and shame, and live again and forever so that we might live forever, too. My challenge sometimes is to replace "we" and "us" with "I" and "me". (Trying reading the paragraph making those substitutions; it's pretty cool!)

But there is one more challenge for me in those troughs. The challenge to remember that God expects more from me. See, it seems to me just as often as the Gospels and the Letters talk about redemption and grace, they talk about forsaking those things that cause us to be ashamed, that cause us to draw back from God. I know it would cause a lot less troughs if I were more disciplined -- more devoted -- to prayer, to the Scriptures, to my God. And I know it would hurt His heart less.

And I know I really really really want to hear those words one day... "Well done, good and faithful servant..."

So time, I hope, to get out of some of these troughs. Time to draw nearer my awesome God.

What keeps you from God? What causes you troughs? And how do YOU draw nearer to Him?

2 comments:

  1. Wow, do I ever sympathize! Why/ Because, I go through exactly the same peaks and troughs--though I suspect my troughs are caused by slightly different behaviors and attitudes than yours since we're all of us unique. But the overlap is amazing. Besides us, there's Paul and everybody else who's ever lived.

    As I've had occasion to say before, there's only been one perfect Human, and we're not Him. This doesn't mean that we get to cut ourselves a break exactly, but we know that God does, thanks to His Son. In the meantime, as you wrote, we need to do our best not to make God's heart hurt for what we've done and thought.

    As I work through the G&B manuscript, I've become more and more sure that I lost my way a little in the last few chapters I wrote. Plus 20 years later, and I'm just now seeing that particular trough in my attitude. There's always a new reason to be humble.

    UtM
    S

    BTW, I'm convinced you're much better about reading the Bible than I am. I always have to force myself to get going with it. As a struggling author, I should know better than to treat the best Author who ever was or will be that way about His Book. (Trouble is saying that doesn't make me any better at following through.)

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  2. You write:
    "But I engage in behaviors, outwardly and in my mind and heart, of which I am deeply ashamed. In addition, I feel I am a very weak pray-er, and that I really don't read the Bible enough, or with consistency enough.... especially for someone who leads a Bible study group. Ugh."
    and
    "they talk about forsaking those things that cause us to be ashamed, that cause us to draw back from God. I know it would cause a lot less troughs if I were more disciplined -- more devoted -- to prayer, to the Scriptures, to my God. And I know it would hurt His heart less."


    Now I may be way off base about the core of what's eating at you here, but I get the feeling that you keep beating yourself up over the same things---things for which you have been forgiven. -If- I'm right, then the following daily email content might come in handy for you to think about:

    Tips on Dealing with Guilt
    A vital difference exists between healthy and unhealthy guilt. Healthy guilt motivates us to amend relationships, make things right, and move toward health. It is focused on others more than on oneself. Unhealthy guilt often results in self-hatred. We condemn ourselves. We refuse to believe we can ever be accepted.

    Shame debilitates. When I meet someone who wrestles with unhealthy guilt and forgiveness, I counsel them to read Psalm 51, which records David's prayer for forgiveness after committing the sins of adultery, murder, lying, and covering up. I challenge each person to read it and ask for forgiveness. Once finished, I tell them, "Don't ever ask God to forgive you for that sin again." For people who wrestle with shame, a pattern forms to bring up the same sins over and over again. I share what the Bible says: "He has removed our sins as far from us as the east is from the west" (Ps. 103:12 NLT). God has removed our sins from us as far as it is possible.

    Confession of sin, of course, is healthy and a necessary part of daily biblical practice. However, constant confession of the same sin inhabits unbelief and not true confession, and the person is often left paralyzed on the road out to freedom.

    If unhealthy guilt weighs you down read Romans 8 every day for the next two weeks. Really let the content sink into your life. I believe you will experience God's forgiveness anew: "So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. And because you belong to him, the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death" (Rom. 8:1-2 NLT).

    -Throw It Down: Leaving Behind Behaviors and Dependencies That Hold You Back, by Jud Wilhite

    Q: Which is more difficult: asking forgiveness, or feeling forgiven?
    From: Zondervan
    --

    If this isn't the problem, well, ...no harm done?

    Under the Mercy,
    SherryT

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