I seem to have no passion for life. I have no passion for following God or His commands. I have no love. Life has become colorless. The lone passion of my heart that is still driving me forward in this life is a passion and a love for myself.
This past summer, I was very blessed with opportunities to be away from my normal life and focus on God. I was able to put my own selfish desires aside and strive to follow Him and his righteousness in my life. I was able to put my focus on God and live for Him and my life was full of passion and joy, pure, uncontainable joy.
But in the last few months, my joy has left me, my focus as has become fuzzy and with that, my vision has become cloudy.
I’ve watched as my focus has shifted from God, to myself. Slowly, as I’ve gone about my everyday life I have allowed myself to strive to live for myself, to bring glory to myself and to deny God in the moments of my life. I have in a way, turned my back on Him. I’ve chosen to ignore Him and His leading. And without God’s presence in my life, without Him validating me with His love, I have had to validate myself. And with that new task I have become prideful. I have become self-seeking. I have tried to elevate myself to make me feel better about myself. I have been seeking for approval, not from God, but from people and in the process I have only become insecure, lustful, hate-filled and bitter.
I am trying to control my own life and I am failing miserably.
As I’ve tried to control my ever-moving life, I’ve found that I can’t do it alone, so I’ve allowed sin to come in to “help” and now, my sin has its claws in my heart. It has darkened my heart and taken my joy and putting an unquenchable longing inside me and even though the pain of that thirst is agonizing I am holding onto the sin, clutching for dear life. I can’t let go, because I love my sin. And I hate that fact.
How can this be? How can I love what I hate and hate what I love?
Deep inside me, God still lives. There is still a small flicker of Light beneath the darkness that now surrounds my heart. There is deep desire and passion to follow God coming from my faith and the gift of salvation I accepted as a young girl and that’s where the battlefield for the conflict of my heart is taking place. There is a battle waging inside me for my heart. I love the thing that I hate. I hate what it does to me, but I still love the thing that is tearing me to shreds.
The one consolation in all of this is that I am not alone in this feeling.
The apostle Paul wrote these words in Romans 7.
“So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am!”
“So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature[d] a slave to the law of sin.”
“Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!”I am a prisoner of war to the sin that is enslaving my body: mind, soul and heart, but there is an escape. God wants to deliver me. Because God still loves me. God wants my heart. Even in the wretched state I am in. Even though I am covered in my own waste and sin, God still loves me and wants me. Because when God looks at me, He does not see a little girl covered in muck and grime holding a dirty heart filled with her sin; He sees a beautiful child, with the clean heart of his perfect Son, Jesus, who took my sins upon Himself and died so that I might be free of them.
I don’t understand why God loves me. I don’t understand why He constantly gives me chance after chance after chance after chance even when I blatantly defy Him and His commands. I don’t understand His unconditional grace for me. Sometimes, it even angers me. Even when I disobey, He always forgives me. It seems unjust to me that I am able to “get away” with my sin like that, but I’m finding that even though I am forgiven and given another chance, there is punishment for my sin, in how it enslaves me. And although odd, I find comfort in that fact, but what’s even more odd is that, I don’t find strong motivation to follow God because of that fact.
I think that it is impossible to follow God out of fear. You might be able to initially, but eventually fear alone will not be enough. As humans we were created to love and be loved. Love is the biggest motivation we have. My strong love for myself is what motivates me to hold on to my sin so tightly. My love for myself is stronger than my fear. Love is stronger than all else and love is the only thing that will motivate us and give us the strength to follow God. But in order to love God, we must deny our first love, the love we are born with due to our sin nature, our love for ourselves.
“Then he (Jesus) said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.” Luke 9:23-24
This sort of self-denial is the single-most hardest thing to do in life, because our love for ourselves and our sin is so strong, but God’s love for us is stronger. And out of His great love for us, the same love that caused God to become man and die for us, He will empower us to love Him the same way he loves us if we ask Him and we seek to follow him in our lives. For I know, that life lived for yourself is overwhelming and painful. It is purposeless and a slavery to sin, but a life, given freely to God, out of love and obedience is filled with freedom from slavery, joy, passion and purpose.
So tonight, I am coming to God with a broken heart, torn apart by sin. I am giving it to Him once again. Because even though I am dirty and torn God wants my heart. He wants to free me from the claws of my sin that are enslaving me. He wants to heal my heart and make it clean. He wants to wrap me in His arms. He wants to fill my heart with His love. Why does He love me? I don’t know. I’m not worth it. But even so, He does love me and because of that, I will once again come before Him and deny myself. I will give Him my heart and give myself fully to the work of the Lord, because I know that labor in the Lord is not in vain (1 Cor. 15:58), but has a life full of passion, of joy, of purpose, of understanding, of holiness, of righteousness and of love.
“Thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” 1 Corinthians 15:57
