Not breaking the cycle **GUEST POST**
What is it for you? What is that thing that you do that you know you probably shouldn’t, but you do it anyways? Is it that thing you said about her to someone else? Is it the harmless flirtation? Is it the tv show that straddles the line? Is it the extra charge on the credit card or the repeated indulgence into the bag of sweets? Maybe it looks like something that you should do but you don’t. How do you justify it? Do you tell yourself that it’s not hurting anyone, that you’ll do it later, or that it’s well within your rights?
I know I do.
My problem is I don’t really know how to stop. I’ve tried so many times. So. Many. Times. Here is the cycle on repeat:
I do the wrong thing->I feel terrible guilt, followed by shame->I make a promise to God that I will do better->I tell Him how sorry I am, and that I resolve to do right by Him the next time.
For a while I do pretty well. I am vigilant and have some major victories.
Until I don’t. Until that one pesky little temptation comes along and for some reason unknown to me this time I don’t say no. I give in. Then comes the guilt. Followed by the shame. Followed by a weepy, weak resolution to do better next time.
It’s always the same. In my heart I wonder, where is this power to overcome sin that the bible talks about? Where is this immense, soul-filling, mountain-moving, earth-shaking Spirit that enables a weak willed person like me to make it stop? I have been stuck in this cycle for what seems like my entire Christian life. Then, in the still of the morning, the Lord opened my eyes to a new way. You see, God never expects us to just take the bad stuff out. I think we can really get hung up on that and just try to purge ourselves of the things of the flesh without replacing them with things of the Spirit. Philippians 4 says “do not be anxious about anything” but it doesn’t end there. God doesn’t simply tell us to stop being anxious, He says “but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” (Phil 4:6). When the anxiety comes, don’t will it away, replace it with prayer. You see, God doesn’t give us these commands and no plan to carry it out. Why do I go on believing I can discipline myself into a sinless existence? I have been so badly desiring for the cyclical nature of my sin to end, and God whispered to me that He has established repetition and pattern in all of His creation. The days and weeks and seasons and life cycles, He designed things this way, and I don’t need to change the nature of it, I need to change how it ends.
James 4 says
Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.
Submit>Resist>Draw near. Spend time with the Lord, submit your will to Him. When temptation comes, resist it, and the devil has no choice but to flee. But then, here it is...draw near to God. There is a moment after you resist a temptation, it’s brief and it’s fleeting, but there is a moment of release, and I think it’s in that moment that everything can change. Maybe sometimes after I resist I feel like I should be rewarded in some way. I have been convinced that yes, sin gives tangible and instant gratification, but your reward for obedience is eternal and in heaven. Yes this is true. By all means this is true. But again-God doesn’t just take things away without giving us something, giving us some part of Him that is equal to or greater than what was lost. He is the God of redemption. He restores what the locusts have eaten, He is the greater portion. So yes, the reward is in heaven, but I believe it can be tangible and instant as well. In that moment, James says draw near to God. After you have submitted, after you resist and the devil flees, draw near. Draw near and He will take that broken part of you that led you into the temptation and he will fill it with Himself. This is worship. When we draw near to Him, and He responds to us, we experience an intimacy that sustains us.
“The secret to freedom from enslaving patterns of sin is worship. You need worship. You need great worship. You need weeping worship. You need glorious worship. You need to sense God’s greatness and be moved by it—moved to tears and moved to laughter—moved by who God is and what He has done for you.”
The cycle doesn’t need to break, it needs to come to completion in an act of worship. I will never stop sinning if I cannot replace what I get from the sin with what I get from God. It’s not enough to know that there is a reward waiting for me in Heaven. God knows this about me. He made me this way. He made me to crave and desire and yearn to be satisfied. He made my desires unquenchable.
Here is the bad news; my propensity to sin has no end. The good news: neither does my God.
There is no high higher than Him, no fix more satisfying, no release more powerful, no calm more peaceful. Can we grasp that the fact that our hearts are so set on self-satisfaction not because we were made to sin, but because we were made to be satisfied? Every sinful attempt to quench a thirst is just a perversion of a God-given desire. The most self-satisfying thing we can do is draw near to God. In him our hearts and bodies will want not. Stop trying to will yourself out of the sin that entangles you, and wrap yourself in the presence of God. He will not disappoint you. He cannot disappoint you. Make worship your weapon of choice, and watch as God surprises you with new mercies and new grace each time around.
Kristi Rice - Selah Memphis