road to death

This morning I was reading through Romans.  I've been on this book all year and it's still blowing my mind.  I've been dwelling on past choices I've made now for a long time and am trying to understand how I keep continuing to in the moment forget the promises of God for momentary happiness.  How is it that there are so many moments that I will disregard what is good for me for poison?  I remember a conversation that Joel and I had this summer when I was lost in some moments of confusion that had Joel asking me, "do you hear yourself?  You sound insane, literally insane, the words coming out of your mouth are insane."  He was talking about sin leading to death.  Not that we die now, but that if I were to continue in that sin it would lead to death.  This hit home for me then, yet I still forgot it until today.


^{Romans 6:
 15}What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! ¹⁶Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? ¹⁷But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, ¹⁸and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.¹⁹ I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.


We are slaves to what we obey.  I find that though the day my thoughts are split down the middle between sinful ones of desire and ones of holiness in Jesus.  One leads to death, one to life.  I desire to crucify these sins that start in my head.  Sin of thought are where physical sin is born.

I really desire to be set free from sin.  The truth is we already have been set free.  So why do I keep living in death?  I suppose it's the fight of being fallen.  In v.19 Paul does say 'in human terms, because of our natural limitations'.  We're always going to be presented with something else that is impure in our hearts and minds.  But even with our minds always going wayward there is grace for us, loving, healing, powerful grace.

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, 
prone to leave the God I love; 
here's my heart, O take and seal it
seal it for Thy courts above.
 

heartache

Isn't it weird that heartache is physical?  Many emotions take form physically, nervousness can wreck a stomach, which I've had my fair share of being a perpetual coward.  But tonight the feeling is that of heartache.  That's the only way to describe it.  I am heartbroken tonight.  Those that know me will probably know why I feel this way; I am yet again delving into the past.  I think tonight is different as there are things going on in my heart that I'm addressing, so to really think through this I'm reading old emails.  It's amazing how simply going through pages upon pages of email can bring back so many memories of past times. Not what the emails themselves say necessarily but the timing of all of them.  I remember all of those emails and the ordering which I received them.  Not all of it and when I see some I forgot, it reminds me.

Tonight was cathartic in some ways.  It's making me thankful for Jesus, for the cross, for the fact that He's taken all of my sins because that's what I was presented with tonight.  Email after email of my folly.  My selfishness.  My choices.

It's hard to gauge regret.  I feel it and it feels real.  I have it in many places in my life, but a running theme in my life are failed relationships.  I want so bad to regret so many things in my life.  But there are two things that I'm wrestling with on why I can't regret.  1) My life is being ordained with God with the end of Him being glorified in all of it.  He redeems it all for His glory.  He knew it would all happen and walk through it with me to teach me something new about Him.  2) That I can't regret not having more faith.  What I would regret more than all the failure in relationships is not being more mature in Christ.  I lament this.  I look back and see a scared boy who is still living on spiritual milk, not a man who is being nourished with meat and potatoes.  I can't speed up sanctification.  While I wish that there were more times I was following Jesus than running, I can't change that in me and even now I want to run much of the time.  I want to have more faith and be more mature five years ago so that I could be married then.  The truth to that matter is that I don't want more faith to follow Jesus but to have him for something I want, which is idolatry.

So for these reasons my heart aches.  It hurts.  There are real scars there that I can't heal.  There's anxiety in there I can't let go of.  It's frustrating and difficult.  I feel like a failure that I'm not married yet.  That I have this desire and yet it is still not met.  I question what it means that I'm still single.  It shakes me.

I've always looked forward to having a family.  Anyone who knows me how much I love kids and the idea of being a father.  I wonder if I want it more than Jesus.  I think I do a lot of the time.  I don't want Jesus so I can have a family.  I want Jesus because He saved me.  It's hard business wrestling with your heart.  That has been the epitome of this year for me.  8 months of me wrestling with my heart, desires, flesh, pain, fears, all of it.  It gets tiresome.  I want to be 'there' (wherever that is).  It's a hard walk but one that is worth it for know more about Jesus.  I'm not going to give up although it's rough.  I want to give up a lot but Jesus is not letting me, neither are the people He's surrounded me with.  I'm thankful for that.