The dominance of pain and pleasure in the present human idea system

Never prior in my life has enduring a difficult season felt more absurd than it does to me now.  Forces in my culture invite me, like siren songs, to reprieves that essentially amount to abdication and not to rest or delight.  Everything invites me to “escape”, “take a break” or “take care of myself”, even when that would amount to departing my station in life.

Indeed, dedication and determination have been trivialized by our society.  To be one who endures is no longer regarded as possible and is becoming less virtuous.  It is rapidly being replaced by a virtue of self-absorptive attentiveness.  The one thought to be wise in our age is the one who knows his/her limits and lives within them. 

The dilemma with this stance is our decreasing capability resulting from our collective life away from God.  Without a robust spiritual life in Jesus Christ even the most basic of life’s activities are becoming thought of as asking too much of individuals to perform.  And it’s sadly the truth for a growing number of us who walk not by the Spirit but according to the flesh.  We “do the best we can”, and call that virtue. 

Being aware of personal limits is not without virtue, but being either unaware of or unwilling to receive the sustaining grace of the Spiritual life certainly is!  I find in myself a readiness for life that is connected to the cultivation of my inner world.  If I have abstained from worldly passions that war against the soul, I find life is readily available, even in times of great duress.  If I have not, then the life is not available to me.  In this way it is a “life from above” and not from me.

God is teaching me more about surrendering to this “life from above”.  Most of my life’s major benchmarks came about because of seasons of personal surrender to what God wanted to do in my life.  Like the Marlin the clown-fish in Nemo, I cling desperately to the whale’s tongue because “I don’t know what will happen” if I let go.  It has had to be my path in life to again and again be invited to consider what a surrender that is not abdication looks like.  It is the “limp” I walk with and I must constantly invite the personal presence of Jesus into those moments of fear and anxiety for change to occur.  I find that only He can release my desperate grip of control. 

But the thought I would hope you would take away from this is not the immensity and reality of my personal struggle (though I do hope it connects with you) but the gospel power unleashed in repentance.  Just the other night (a Sabbath night, of course) I told Melanie with tears in my eyes of how grateful I am for all that has been in our life.  I have tried to control my career.   That was broken and re-made.  I tried to control the process of finding a marriage partner.  That was broken and remade.  I tried to control the process of becoming a father.  That was broken and remade.  And now as I try to control Wits End church, may I be broken and remade again.  I have experienced the kingdom life now by allowing my life to be remade into His way and not mine.  It is my limp alongside his sufficient grace that stuns me again and again.  May I always live in the glory and kindness of his sufficiency, and may I be able to glory in my weaknesses, so that all His strength might be mine.

And may that strength allow me to laugh at the absurdity of living for my own pleasure or pain, but rather to do everything I do in the name of Jesus, for the glory of God.