Still Very Much Under Construction

One summer, I sat in the teachers' lounge, eating peanut butter and jelly on a graham cracker. I say "peanut butter and jelly" because, there was a faint aroma of peanuts on the cracker and the tiniest smear of jelly. Despite a couple hours of hockey practice in the morning and stocking shelves in the school library the rest of the day, that would be the only thing I would eat until the following afternoon when I sat in the teachers' lounge once again. I had begun playing games with food and I wasn't even in high school yet. 

More than fifteen years ago, Scott quit drinking. The Holy Spirit gave him the strength to simply walk away. Just like that! Praise God! Then he decided to quit smoking. Multiple attempts, multiple methods, and even though he has been smoke free for years now, he struggles everyday. Sometimes it's like that. Sometimes we are given grace upon grace to walk in newness of life as though we never were dead. Other times we are given grace upon grace to sweat and dig and lift in the building of a life that God makes new. The brambles of temptation litter the ground and the bedrock of sin resists being broken. There will be no new structure without labor. The eating disorder that has plagued me most of my life more closely resembles the sweaty struggle of Option #2.

I have prayed for God to instantly change my stinkin' thinkin' --decades of it. Instead, He tells me that in Him I can be transformed by the renewing of my mind, and a foundation will be laid. I have prayed that one day I will wake up and no longer think of ways to eat as much as I'd like or ways to avoid having to eat at all. Instead, He gives me new things to consider: true things, pure things, lovely things, and the bricks are stacked one by one. I have prayed I would discover a way to love the body God has given me and treat it as His dwelling place. He answers that all I do is to be for Him and the lies that set me on this path of self-abuse contradict everything He says about me; that blueprint is the law I trust and obey. I have looked for that secret formula that would change everything for me overnight. Instead, God assures, Cast your burden on the Lord, And He shall sustain you (Psalm 55:22), as He invites me to labor alongside Him. 

So, that's where we are. About four weeks ago, I had a "crash and burn" kind of day. I ate so much junk --easily a 5000 calorie day! (just to offer some perspective)-- that I felt terrible for days. In the past, my crash and burn day would have been followed by multiple days of "slash and burn" tactics: purging, "sub-safe" calorie intake, crazy workouts, beating my body into submission, punishing myself for being such a terrible person. (Which is really why the "crash and burn" days usually happen in the first place.) But the slash and burn didn't happen. Instead, I held on to God's promises, I talked to someone about the things I'd done and the way I was feeling, I refused to hide anything in the dark, and I asked God to help me build back what I had torn down. We'd worked so many years on that, and I'd leveled it in less than a day; but, apparently, the foundation had started to crack, so we're rebuilding it once more.

I'm not fixed. I'm not cured. I am still very much under construction in many ways. But I'm not closing down the jobsite. I am going to wake up each and every morning God gives me, be grateful, focus on obeying Him, cling to truth, and give each day my best shot. Brick by brick. Will I fail? Yep (I relapsed two days ago), but I'm also investigating why this season, why now, what are the triggers, and how I will react to those triggers in a more mature, more appropriate way. All the while, I'm trusting the same God who delivered me from sin and death will sustain me each and every time I give this effort to Him; I'm receiving His grace upon grace to do the hard stuff.

This Really Stinks!

Look at these flowers. Are they beautiful, or what?!

Alright, if I'm being honest, they're not all that beautiful. But they're not terrible either. In fact, I'd call them "nice to have around", or "normal", or "acceptable", perhaps I'd even call them "better than average".

Scott got me these flowers two weeks ago. They've had a good run, but that black spot right there in the center of that one in front, the wilting, the browning, and the fading of colors? All signs of death. And the smell! I know you can't smell them, but this morning as I walked into the kitchen, the smell was the first thing that hit me --and not in a good way. Funny, two weeks ago, a beautiful fragrance filled the room. But today? The dreadful smell of death.

People can be the same way. We can look pretty good on the outside. Not terrible. Maybe even nice to have around, normal, acceptable, or better than average. We can appear to have it all together. Sure, we might have our divots and scratches. That doesn't mean we can't add something colorful to the landscape. But take a good whiff. Are you rotting from the inside out? Is your beauty only skin deep? It may seem harsh, but without Jesus, that is death you smell.

As a child, I learned the lyrics of a song that accompanied Child Evangelism Fellowship's Wordless Book, a tool used all over the world to share the gospel message:

My heart was dark with sin until the Savior came in.
His precious blood I know has washed me white as snow.
And in God's Word I'm told I'll walk the street of gold.
To grow in Christ every day, I read my Bible and pray.

New life God gave to me--life abundant and free.

He wants this new life to grow--the Bible tells me so.
Loving and trusting and praying, witnessing and obeying,
I'll grow in knowledge and grace until I see His face.

It's hard for us to think of our hearts being so wicked, so deceitful, dark with sin, but the Bible tells us that is the case. We might think we're kind and compassionate, giving and forgiving, well behaved and self-controlled, but even King David, a man after God's own heart, knew his judgment could not be trusted. He asked God to search his heart, to point out any way in which he was not living as a man of God. 

As a Christian, my heart has been washed clean by the blood of Jesus Christ on the cross. God looks at me through the righteousness of Jesus; I am acceptable before Him and my punishment for sin, past, present, future has been served. But there are things that still affect my soul, my human nature. There are temptations that come to me from the world, from Satan and his minions, and my own humanity; if I fail to resist them, the new life and the good works God has given me to do can begin to show signs of decay. My salvation is secure, my identity is in Christ, but the choices I make or the way I conduct myself won't reflect that. Like David, I still need the Holy Spirit of God to do those regular checks. God, is there something taking root in my life that should not be? Is there something that's going to corrupt my relationship with You or with others? 

If you don't know Jesus as your Savior, if you haven't taken the time to search out, in the pages of the Bible, who He is and what He's done for all of us, I urge you to do that today. If you have been following Him, but have maybe started to feel a little lukewarm, or just haven't asked Him to examine your motives and your behavior lately, I urge you to do that. Looks can be deceiving. Without Jesus, we are not okay --it's that simple. In fact, if we're not obeying Jesus, no matter how we look, we're just stinkin' up the place.