Lessons I'm Learning

For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ. -- Philippians 1:6

When I first came to Christ, when He first delivered me from darkness and pain, I experienced an incredible release and relief. Doors opened, shackles dropped off and I had liberating freedom. Joy bubbled up out of me, I couldn’t contain it. Everything, absolutely every bit of pain (which included a desperately unhappy childhood, the death of my own first-born child and the knowledge that I could never, ever have healthy biological children) was as nothing compared to the gift that God had given me freely. I could and did easily thank Him for my past because it had led me to where I was. And the place that I found myself was incomprehensibly delightful and joyous.

All of that, of course, wore off. I’d gone to church for awhile already and had never heard the salvation message. Only lists of 'Don’ts' and 'You shoulds' and 'we have tos'. And that’s what I still heard after salvation. Only now I really paid attention. And I found that I wasn’t a very good Christian. That every which way I turned I was failing somehow. Well, after what God had done for me, I sure didn’t want to fail Him. So I listened to the pastor and the other Christians around me, I read my Bible and I prayed for God to help me defeat this, that and the other in my life. I worked hard at being good. For God.

And the more I tried, the more I failed. Over the course of years, struggling to be what I thought God wanted me to be, I became exhausted, bitter, angry and resentful. I wouldn’t admit that, of course. But it came out in my dealings with people and that gave me and others just one more club to brow-beat me with. It didn’t seem to matter how hard I tried or how hard I prayed, I just became more critical, more unhappy and I wasn’t even on the same planet with joy. I didn’t understand. If I was a new creature in Christ why did I feel and act like the same old failure?

Then I was studying my Bible and I read Philippians 1:6. “For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ.” The implications hit me like a brick. I was failing because I was trying to do the Holy Spirit’s job. Paul says it plain as day. It wasn’t I who began a good work or anything else. And it wasn’t I who would perfect anything. Only the Holy Spirit can do that and I’d been getting in His way all these years. I gave up trying to ‘be good’ and learned a thing or three. Turns out, when I was working on “this” problem, not only was my focus on ME not Him, but it also wouldn’t allow Him to work on the things He wanted accomplished. Pride, the thing that God hates, had kept me thinking that I could do something with myself. That I could turn myself into “a holy and living sacrifice” for Him. The thought is so ludicrous as to be funny.

I’ve stepped out of His way now. A good bit of the time, anyway. He surprises me with the things He changes, the things He teaches me, things I’d have never begun to think about in a million years. And yet those are the things that He wants done and He does them relatively painlessly. He certainly causes me far less pain than I was causing myself for all those years. And, in the process, He’s given me back something that I’d lost for a very long time.

He’s given me Joy

I was talking to one of my very favorite people and he commented that what trips so many Christians up in so many ways is the belief that life is fair. We are taught from little on up that we need to be fair. Share our toys, take turns, etc. And then we grow up and think that life still works that way and it simply isn't so.

We find ourselves in situations that cause us a lot of anger, angst and confusion because they are patently unfair. We ask how this can possibly be when we've been as faithful and obedient as we know how to be. Or we've done what we truly and sincerely believed to be the right thing to do and find ourselves knocked flat with no explanation. Or we know people who are Godly and faithful and, yet, seem to have a great big target on them for sorrow and disappointment and disaster.

So, we wonder and worry and try to make sense of it. We tell ourselves and others that 'this' is the reason God has allowed such and so to happen. He's keeping us from something worse or His timing is perfect or He's preparing us for what He has in store for us. And, many times, those things are absolutely true. Other times they are merely words we say to make ourselves feel better and to enable us to cling to the idea that life is fair and that we'll get what we deserve for all our faithfulness eventually.

But stop and think. I know God is just but do I really want Him to be 'fair'? Do I honestly want what I 'deserve'? A thousand times NO! What I deserve is hell and eternal separation from Him. No matter how faithful I think I am, no matter how obedient, I am a sinner. It's who I am not what I do. And if God gave me what I truly deserve it would be horrific indeed.

So God, in His infinite love, satisfied justice by sacrificing His Son so that I don't have to suffer what I deserve.

And His 'unfairness' extends into our daily lives to our good all the time. He tells those I've hurt to forgive me. Whether I'm sorry or not. He sometimes relieves me of the consequences of my foolish and disobedient behavior. What's 'fair' about that? Not a thing. So when we grouse and grumble about things not happening the way they 'should' according to our ideas of fair-play it behooves us to remember that it works the other way, too, and that we reap the benefits regularly.

God is just but life isn't fair. And I'll take grace any day.