H,
This honesty is not a call
to excess or consolation or indulgence. The truth is if you have reached the
point of wanting or willing to be honest, it is no longer an excuse but an
opportunity. You do not want to be given license to sin but the ability to rise
above sin. It is the crucial moment of surrender we all need to kick on from
holiness or wholeness as a good idea to it becoming the main thing we seek.
There are things to note,
though. First, the series of failures that led you to surrender your very self
to God will not disappear overnight. Years and years have passed with you being
exactly the thing you now wish to evolve from. You will not get out of your
funk in a day. It is enough that you do not want to be this way anymore. Grace gives
you a wide berth on the narrow road. The standards do not drop but the solution
is in a savior able to lift us up from each and every fall.
The other thing, and even
more crucial, is that your aim may be to solve just one problem while He has
other ideas. There is that famous C.S. Lewis analogy with a house owner
yielding some parts of his life-house to Christ only to find that the Lord does
not want to just fix the plumbing or hang new pictures on the wall. He wants to
build a whole new house and become the owner. He wants to own you as much as
you, sort of, own Him. This is what love demands.
The final thing is that this
is going to go on for a while. There are no real sign posts and progress
reports are sketchy at best. Sometimes the day is darkest just before dawn and
other times it is just midnight. In all things, through all the fire and
falling, there is a light rising. You might not see it. This is when you need
faith. You may not feel it. This is when you need hope. You may find yourself
battling intense thoughts of unworthiness. This is when you need love. There is
a light and it never goes out. It is forever fire. You seem far away from it in
this moment. This is why you always need God.
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