With incapabilities comes surrender.
It's something I'm learning on this race, and it's not always fun. Just a quick look into my soul reminds me just how incapable I am. Just a quick look at God reminds me how incapable I am, as a creature of the flesh, to reach holiness. I am driven by my incapabilities everyday I actually pay attention to them here on the race. We are all incapable. The question is, where do your incapabilities take you?
One place they can take you is a hard heart. To accept that you are incapable and just refuse to move. To stay put in them. To suppress the truth that's deep inside. As a result, walls of distraction and business get built up so you don't have to look at your damaged heart, and you'll feel okay. This is what the Pharisees did with morality. They busied themselves in order to feel safe and righteous without looking at their hearts. They were incapable. Yet their hearts were too walled up to see it.
One place they can take you is doubt. I go here often. I think a lot of Christians do. We have no problem accepting our incapabilities because God in His grace has exposed them in us, yet we buy into this lie that because we are incapable God is absolutely disappointed in us, condemns us, is impatient with us, and we get locked in this cage of doubt that God could actually love us. Satans voice is overwhelming here:
You are failing! You are a hypocrite! You aren't worthy! God hates where you are!
It's always subtle, and it's always backed up with examples. Twisted examples. Doubt comes in when the "you ares" become "I am's", and we buy into a lie. That will steal joy. Oh, it steals mine all the time.
The only true place our incapabilities were meant to drive us is God. Our incapabilities draw us to a savior! That was the whole point of the law and the commandments. Our own incapabilities to follow that law exposed the fact that something is wrong deep inside our hearts. This is exactly what Jesus came preaching to–our hearts. Not to tighten up morally, but that we are incapable, which is why he calls the weary at heart and the incapable to Himself to give them REST! In 1st Peter 5 the Holy Spirit tells us to cast our burdens onto Jesus; Jesus says, come all who thirst, come all who are heavy laden, come–taste and see that I'm good. It's an invitation! Are you tired? Weighed down? Incapable? The Kingdom is full of seekers like you! Come on…surrender.
Ohhhh…there it is.
My least favorite word in the dictionary. But this is the best option because it's for our joy. It's what Jesus is after. Its what he refuses to be denied in. And, like faith, it's not a one time thing. Faith is a process in which we are called to persevere, so is surrender. For me, I long to surrender everything I have to Jesus, and in the large scale I have given Him my life, but I would be a liar if I said I wasn't hanging onto a few things. The reality is, as God daily exposes incapabilities in my life, I am daily invited to surrender those incapabilities to the one who can actually help me in them. It becomes my JOY to give Him everything because I know Him as good and righteous, and He actually wants to take these from me. To heal me.
This is the choice I want to make: joy. These 3 months on the race have taught me that my identity is safe in Christ, and that any incapabilty that is exposed is not meant to reveal condemnation, but brokenness that needs healing. My incapabilities are my biggest blessing because they point me to Christ. There is now no condemnation for us who have identified ourselves in the cross of Christ, and we now have the boldness to approach God because we are Holy before Him. Faith, surrender, freedom…it's all a struggle. He called us to pick up our cross, and that thing gets heavy sometimes, but we are following someone who has gone ahead of us in our lives…and he is capable.
