Nothing of great worth will ever come by WANT alone- it must be strived for.
Sweat, blood, and tears have to be shed over it. Ease and convenience are not what it takes to have it, and it certainly isn’t stumbled upon.
I’m finding that its only by training yourself to obey what you know you need, and not just what you want, that the thing of great worth will come.
Leaving things behind in abandonment is always a choice… and not one that’s made only once. Its everyday, and sometimes every minute… The good news is, I know its entirely possible to be truly free… but the process is not for the faint of heart. It will take a fight.
I‘ve longed for it become like a distant memory, where so much time and space has passed through it, that it’s sting has dissipated. No morsel alive to haunt me, nothing left to entice me. Water under the bridge that flows as far as the east is from the west…
The past.
I’m adding it to the list of “Things Abandoned“.
Things subtle… that which I didn’t even know I was letting define me…
Things obvious… pains that have left a poignant, unmistakable mark…
Both are gone-see-ya-bye. *
“Whatever was to my profit before, and whatever my heart longed for in my past, I now consider it DUNG compared to knowing Jesus Christ.
Even further, EVERYTHING is dung in comparison to Him. Nothing is worth keeping me from abiding in Him. Nothing. And anything that stands in my way, any hindrance that keeps me from Him, I will push it aside.
He is better than all things, and if it comes down to it, I’ll give away whatever I need to…
Christ is better than my family.
Christ is better than my future, and all the people and plans that come with it.
Christ is better than my best friends.
Christ is better than financial stability.
Christ is better than my reputation, my comfort, my ideals, my past…
Jesus simply isn’t trade-able to me. Its all dung next to Him.”
(–my paraphrase of Phil 3:7-11)
Holding on to snip-its of what is done and over is like carrying around the dead carcass of my old self around on my back with me all the time. Tote that dead carcass around enough and it will not only weigh me down, its disease will feast on my flesh. And I’ll die as slow, painful death from lugging what’s already dead and gone.
Not to mention that I make a mockery of the whole point of the cross and resurrection.
The guy had been lying there for 38 years, unable to move, hanging out with the other invalids, begging for money for a living, believing that there were supposed healing powers in the water of the Pool. Then out of the blue, Jesus gives the guy the opportunity to be healed. He asks him if he WANTS to be made well…
But his answer to Jesus was less than enthusiastic.
He whines.
He complains that he has no one to help him.
He says that when the water is stirred, someone else always gets in in front of him.
*Que sob story violin music*
So for 38 years, he tells Jesus, he has just never had a chance.
Maybe…
Or maybe not.
Maybe the longer you live a certain way, the harder it is to break free from it. And you start to make excuses for why you just can’t exist outside of those lines.
Maybe if all you knew about making a living for 38 years was begging, it’d freak you out to be offered/threatened to have the one thing that made it legit removed.
Maybe you’d have to learn a whole new way of life… Maybe you’d have to accept a new identity.
Maybe you’d given up hope that things would ever be any different. Maybe the will to be well is long past… maybe you’d made peace with the idea that you’d just always carry that burden around.
Maybe it’s more comfortable to stay in what you know. Even if it’s painful. Even if it’s lukewarm.
Most people do.
That’s why this process isn’t for the faint of heart. It takes more than ease and convenience to change. Abandoning who you were is always an intentional choice.
“Do you REALLY want to be healed? Because I can do it… but I need to know, is that REALLY what you want? It will be a whole new way of life for you… You aren’t going to understand how to function right away… You’ll have to strive to learn to live. You’ll have to sweat blood and tears to not revert backwards. You’ll have to let go of all that you previously thought made you YOU. You’ll have to let go of your past… It won’t have any power over you anymore… but how much is freedom worth to you? What sacrifices are you willing to make to know what I REALLY have for you?”
What if the man had said no? If he’d said, “No thanks, whatever your name is. I’m fine sitting here in the mud with the fleabag dogs and my own waste”?
Then he probably would’ve just died disabled, living at a fraction what he could’ve.
But worse, he would’ve lived that way longer than he had to.
I know what it means to have been like a caged bird for years, then set free and brought into wide open spaces, only to sometimes want to fly back to that cage.
Because at least I know the cage. At least it’s comfortable. And least I understand it.
However, guess what else I consider to be DUNG?: Comfortable cages that I understand.
“I haven’t gotten this all down yet. As much as I want to have Christ be the ALL in my life, He isn’t to me yet. I haven’t been made perfect-BUT I PRESS ON. He is my goal. I haven’t quite grasped it… in fact, truth be told, I still consider some things in my life more than I consider Christ. Even my past brings me down sometimes. But I choose to forget what is behind. Forget who I WAS. It doesn’t even matter. I’m not that girl. Those days are done. They don’t define me. They don’t determine who I am now. I STRAIN ahead. I push, I sweat, I cry. I strain with ALL my energy to move forward. I will not let who I WAS keep me from Christ.”
(–my paraphrase of Phil 3:12-14… **)
Because Christ is better than anything past. Nothing is worth keeping me inside of myself, trapped in a reality fashioned and tailored by my own mind, defined by yesterday’s heartbreak and victories.
The bold truth I have to come face to face with is this: either He still makes all things new, or He doesn’t.
If he doesn’t, then he’s a dead man who can’t raise anything from the grave. And in that case, this whole blog is pointless. And so is my life.
If He does, then He is worth every drop of sweat, blood, and tears that it takes to run this race and strive for the Goal. He is worth pushing everything aside for. And He is worth abandoning hindrances from the past. He is worth existing for.
Abandon my past, to move to my future in Him…
Loose my life… in order to find it.
* Emotions always follow thoughts —> How I feel is directly linked to what I think on —> What I think on is my choice —> Why “renewing your mind” is beautifully necessary —> The old disintegrates —> New things of the Spirit are injected in it’s place…
**All this coming from Paul, by the way… the guy that authored 30% of our Bible… the primary guy who helped begin the Church… the guy who obviously loved Jesus, and worked tirelessly to proclaim His truth through the midst of persecution, shipwrecks, imprisonment, etc… stuff we can’t even begin to wrap our minds around… He says he hasn’t gotten it down yet. But he chooses to move forward. He chooses to not allow the past define him. And if anyone had reason to be ashamed of his past, it would be him. His story trumps any of ours. And yet, he strains. Tirelessly…To forget what is behind, because it is a hindrance. Because Christ is better than who he was.
