new creature

my walk with Christ, my spiritual life, has been rough.

not in the sense that i've been overtly persecuted. not because i've experienced incredible opposition or trudged through death, disease, and poverty.

the road has been jagged and long because i've suffered from overdoses of mediocrity, laziness, underachievement, depression, selfishness, rebellion, immaturity, pride, mirthlessness, and countless moments of misplaced trust.

wicked, deceived, stubborn, i have made life much more difficult than need be. i complained and fought the tides of righteousness and grace because, when growing up, i was showered with nothing but praise of what a good Christian i was. full-headed, i became legalistic when i went to The Master's College and lost the fresh understanding of Christ through four years of educational discovery. stale, cracked and dry i faltered for years. years! i've tasted single drops and bouts of thunderstorm grace, knowing always that God would never leave, regardless of my sterility. weeping, falling, crying out, God has actively watched with patience as i've writhed in my own vices. He pulls me to my feet and wipes away the tears, but i again tumble down one, two, eighty flights of stairs, wondering with each bump why i never relied more securly on His arm.

i found the value of depending on human counsel, but began to slip into comfort; rather than wrapping myself in God's cloaks and pouring my heart to Him as i once did, i started voicing every concern to humans first. salah, jennifer, shababe, danice, katey, ruthie, adnama, melany, mum, dad, and dane, to name a few, have all been recepients of my failings and have listened to my thoughts before i opened them to my Lord. i liked the physical attention better; i coveted their voice and desired their sympathies. advice i could hear. hands i could hold.

i betrayed Him. i threw my heart at people and sneered at Him, letting Him know i could find His advice in the mouths of others and i didn't need His Words to soothe or His arms to fall into. i cradled my own heart and watched it turn to ash, and then came crawling back to Him, begging Him for a new one. He always gave it. when i truly repented, i mean.

my folly is abundant. my spirit is black and torn. it's tattered. i've wandered so far the past few years of my life, i'm often stalked by emotions and ideas that no one could really love me. if they had truly been there to see me turn to stone, they wouldn't say the things they say to "make me feel better." everyone in my life that i love has tried to reassure me, but i don't need their reassurance because they don't know my heart like God does. i've doubted advice and sometimes promised to take it to thought, but never did, because they didn't know my spiritual condition; i wouldn't tell them. i didn't lie about it, but i concealed it with silence or trite words.

no.

no one loves me.

not like God.

He was there to see me fall into sin over and over again. He's been faithful and persistent; He's watched me - He saw me and loved me at my darkest when i was too damaged to reach out to another human. He lifted me when He knew i was going to throw it in His face a day later. He kept running with me when i shadowed myself behind a wall of stagnant faith. He found me when my feet were broken and my legs numb with fleeing His presence. He rocked my soul to sleep and washed my muddy face clean, whispering and comforting when my body finally gave out, and i had no where to go.

i thought i was crazy when people told me i was fine; i thought i'd lost it when i was looking up from inside a pit, loved ones (meaning well) circling the top and saying there was nothing wrong. but they couldn't see me on the inside. i angrily shuffled my feet those days, bitter that no one saw where it hurt most; i couldn't speak; they didn't know me; they hushed me with promises that i was going to be okay when i woke up.

each day, i woke up a little more broken, a little more anorexic, a little more asthmatic, a little more cancerous, a little more dead, until i began sleeping through the night. and through the day. dead. dead. dead.

but i hid my gray skin and foggy eyes because i didn't want people to think any differently of me. i didn't want people to know i'd killed myself. that i was struggling. cold and alone, sunshine and warmth broke through when i caught glimpses of Christ in His flickering pages of Life; they fluttered every day between my fingers, but my heart refused to receive everything they offered.

this won't make sense, but now i've realized i don't know everything. i've realized that there is much more to this faith than what i've been living. years of stumbling will continue, and closure comes only next, but

i'm desperate

for newness and for revival.

knock away the scales and pull my hair free; wipe away the grime and break through such hardened skin; i hate my walk as it was, so i'll grip His arm and remember why i'm living.


Father, what can we say? we feel utterly unworthy in the face of Christ's unspeakable sufferings. we are sorry. it was our sin that brought this to pass. it was we who struck Him and spit on Him and mocked Him. O Father, we are so sorry. we bow ourselves to the dirt

and shut the mouths of our small, dark, petty, sinful souls.

O Father, touch us with fresh faith that we might believe the incredible. the very pain of Christ that makes us despair is our salvation. open our fearful hearts to receive the Gospel.

waken dead parts of our hearts that cannot feel what must be felt - that we are loved with the deepest, strongest, purest love in the universe.

Oh, grant us to have the power to comprehend with all the saints the height and depth and length and breadth of the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, and may we be filled with the fullness of God.

Fight for us, O God, that we do not drift numb and blind and foolish into vain and empty excitements. life is too short, too precious, too painful to waste on worldly bubbles that burst. Heaven is too great, hell is too horrible, eternity is too long that we should putter around on the porch of eternity.

O God, open our eyes to the vastness of the sufferings of Christ and what they mean for sin and holiness and hope and heaven. we fear our bent to trifling. make us awake to the weight of glory - the glory of Christ's incomparable sufferings.

in His great and wonderful name, amen.

-John Piper, Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ, 72