Coming Clean With Ourselves
How can I get myself out of this mess without anyone knowing? How can I ever get free of the secrets and shame I feel? These were questions to which I didn’t have any answers.
And as I shared in the last post, I had the “appearance” of faith without any of Jesus’ power to save or transform me. I’d been living out a facade for decades, trying to live out faith in my understanding of it without the Holy Spirit’s power I needed inside me. Romans 1:25 – CSB And the response to the disconnection in my soul was a desire to ease the pain. But a numbing behavior was always temporary and was actually getting in the way and suppressing truth in my life. Romans 1:18 – ESV Bible
Have you been waking up to this reality too, friend? Are you seeing the disconnection between your belief in God and how you are really living? Do you have a hard time imagining your life transformed and differently from how it is right now?
So did I for a long time.
Everything inside us fights against admitting we are powerless to change it. All the while, we circle something or someone as an idol until we decide to accept God’s saving grace through faith in Jesus. Our need is for mercy – not getting what we really deserve – and we need to feel God’s love through grace – receiving something we don’t deserve. Psalm 116:1 – CSB Bible
Our souls recognize the hypocrisy of incongruent thoughts and actions, but so often, our body and brain don’t. We deny the truth to ourselves and hide from God, our only real hope. We hide by swearing off religion because it hadn’t delivered what it promised – and honestly, religion doesn’t. Only a life-giving personal relationship with Jesus can provide for every need. Or perhaps someone at church hurt you? I’m so sorry you suffered from that. Please don’t let a relational disconnection keep you from realizing your deepest desire – God’s love for you.
It’s my personal opinion that the most dangerous spiritual place we can be is inside a church body depending upon human words or traditions with our hearts and actions far from true worship. Just because our physical bodies are somewhere doesn’t prove anything. Especially not to God.
In the stuck messy place of an uncontrollable habit and heartache was where I found God was near, waiting for me to recognize my insufficiency and to cry out to Him. My heart finally figured out it needed a doctor. Mark 2:17 – ESV
Recognizing our weakness and inability to do anything about it is our saving grace. It opens our eyes and ears and, more importantly, our hearts to God. 2 Chronicles 16:9 – CSB The thing we’d do anything in our power to change brings us to the end of our failed self-help plan, compelling us to come clean and tell God the whole truth and ask His forgiveness for how far off we were from Him.
I now know healthy spiritual growth is the fruit of deeper and deeper knowledge and love for Jesus.
The good news is – but God! It is possible to find true purpose and peace no matter what you’ve done or what anyone has done to you.
There is freedom from shame when God shines His face upon us!
