A million thoughts a minute. Every shred of information that comes into my mind is dissected.
For example:
“Why?”
“What am I missing?”
“Why can’t I see this or that which is apparent to everyone else? Why can’t I see that which is so obvious to all others?”
“Why can’t I piece it together like everyone else seems to be able to do?”
“Why didn’t I have a revelation in this or that area like him or her?”
“Why are my words so ineffectual, but theirs always speak to the people’s hearts?”
“Why don’t I ever seem to learn the lessons I’m taught?”
“Why is my memory so terrible?”
“How do I teach and disciple others if I can’t retain any knowledge? How do I grow?”
“What’s the right, Biblical way to do this?”
“Why is this thing I thought was resolved an issue again?”
“Why am I not hearing from God?”
“What is the heart behind this or that?”
“Why can’t I achieve this love?”
“Why does everyone seem to experience this genuine experience, but it still feels like I’m falling just short of that genuine experience myself? What’s holding me back here?”
“What leads to that genuine love like Christ had, and how do I get and give it— Oh wait, no, that sounds like it should be something simple. I’m just missing it, but now I can’t seek help from others to understand that because people will think my faith has been a charade this whole time. Wait a minute, has it? Have I been faking it deep down this whole time?”
“Wait, now let’s start evaluating that.” (*Goes into a hours long session where I seclude myself and tear my mind apart trying to evaluate my faith and nearly break my mind in the process)
Welcome to my mind. Or rather, a small glimpse of it. I don’t often let others into it. It’s terrifying!
And when all these thoughts culminate and marinate in my mind I want to do one of two things:
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Answer them all satisfactorily.
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Run away and hide.
Well, I can’t answer most of them, and God won’t give me the answers I want when I ask. So I hide. Usually that looks like sleeping, because in sleep you don’t have to deal with anything.
But they’re there when I wake up.
So I look for distractions. But they only work for so long, and not that long at that. Humanity prides itself on its intellectual prowess. But in truth our pride and ingorance/mockery of the spiritual world has made it his playground for all manner of deceptions: of the self, the universe we live in, our motives/actions, etc. When he is allowed to run about unhindered in your mind, he can do SO much damage! And if you are someone who is a threat to his work and whose mind is vulnerable? You’d better believe he will carefully, thoroughly design a nearly flawless plan to perfectly, UTTERLY DESTROY it!
And that’s what he’s been doing to me.
And when it all culminates and processes in my mind it becomes apparent just what his game has been this whole time. A lot of those questions come out of deceptions he has spun in my mind about my identity in God’s eyes, and I’ve allowed them to cloud my vision (ex: “Why is my memory so terrible/Why can’t I achieve this love/why can’t I seem to ever learn?/etc.).
And yet, there’s still something convincing and tempting about the other thoughts he brought to my mind. I mean, why can’t I seem to experience this genuine love? Why am I not hearing from God lately? Why can’t I see what seems to be so apparent to everyone else (there will be an upcoming blog on Pride and the spirit of Comparison based on this particular question)? What am I missing?
So I take it ALL to God for help. I ask– no, BEG for help and understanding and answers; for clarity. And He gives me an answer, just one, to all these questions. And I wrestle with that answer IMMENSELY! And when I come to grips with it, I am left no longer with desires for answers or comfort or freedom from this spiritual assault or anything else really. No, I only have one desire left within me…
…I desire to die.
…but it’s not what you’re thinking.
You see, God, instead of answering these questions, showed me that I was allowing questions to drive my faith and that in allowing them to do so that, in truth, I wanted to get matters of the heart and the vastness of Himself, His ways, His genuine way of love, etc. squeezed down into the bottle that is the human mind. In other words, I wanted faith that required no reliance, no trust in Him.
…That’s not how faith works.
When I went into Training Camp for the Race, my faith did not look like a relationship with Christ. It looked like me knowing a lot about the Bible. It was a head thing, and relationships can’t be built from the head; they have to be built from the heart. If you are strategizing and planning/thinking out your relationship with anyone you’re doing it wrong, simply put. Whatever your interactions are with anyone you consider to have a relationship with, they need to flow from the heart.
And as I battled all this out in my mind and pleaded for answers and healing, He calmly led me back to earlier days in my life, to words I would hear almost every Sunday from my teachers, and they come from Proverbs 3:5-6:
“Trust in the Lord with ALL of your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths.”
And upon rereading and reflecting upon that I realized, as hard as it was, that that was the ultimate answer to the questions that would race through my mind. God is so immense and the love that exists in relationship with Him so deep and genuine that if I try to compute either in my head it will literally break my mind. Words can only do so much (and honestly what little they do is beyond being laughable). I need to lay down this desire to fit God into the frame of my comprehension. I can know about Him, certainly. We should strive to know about Him. But knowledge/words and genuineness cannot bridge the gap between themselves. If I desire genuiness, it has to come out of living out experiences WITH God. If I want to grow in my faith I have to walk with Him, and that means facing all the things that lie along the path. But I’m never alone in facing them, the good or the bad, the mountains or the valleys.
Whatever the case may be, the fact remains that I need to stop trying to satisfy my fleshly mind’s desire to get God, my life, and my relationship with Him down to a science; that’s where all these questions were flowing from. to die to myself. Jesus in Luke 9:23 puts it more fully:
“He who wishes to follow me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”
The cross is a symbol of death. If I want to follow after Him and receive His fullness and His abundantly more I need to lay down my desires to know and answer everything and replace them with His desires, both for me and the kingdom, and just trust in Him for all things, in all things.
And so, I desire to die; die to all of my own desires whatever they may be and replace them for His own desires for me. In that I know there is real joy. I got a really good taste of it for the first time in Thailand, and it was shortly following that that the attack on my mind ensued. So I look forward to laying all my desires down and replacing them for His because in that it shuts off an area of vulnerability where Satan would attack and gives it over to the Lord. And from that I know this lifespring will spring forth, and having tasted that I am BEYOND excited for what lay in store!
Guard your mind, body, and soul; take up the armor of God daily. Give the fight over to God. Trust Him to provide your daily bread, both physically and spiritually
