No sweets of giving them up

Nothing is as I would first choose it to be, right now. I miss my baby to be and I am failing at nearly everything.

Works-righteousness is the idea that our peace in Christ variates because of the choices we make to do or not do the right things. And I think if I believed it I would lose hope. Because my Christianity would diminish when I was frustrated at myself. But it's at that very moment that He wants to be there with me; it's the frustrated He came to save, and that is why I keep on believing that I am restored fully through faith alone.

When I fail I feel like giving up on being obedient altogether. Even when I know there is a blessing promised, if it is too hard, or if I am too incapable or too slow to change, then it doesn't look like it pays off, anymore, to try to do what is right. And that is why I begin to loathe myself. Because I am stuck. I am forced to choose to surrender my goal or else forced to admit that I don't have it in me to make it there.

I need a mediator. My mediator is faith.

Not faith in myself that I am awesomely strong enough or good enough, because I'll waste a lifetime proving myself that that awesomeness doesn't exist. Nor do I have faith that somehow the standard is not as strictly interpreted as I once thought (that is true deception right there). But faith in God to produce in me, all of it in me, -the work of generating something from nothing.-

If the Artic Sea is the Holy Spirit, and a year ago I was an iceberg floating in that sea, today I am still an iceberg, only a significantly smaller one. There are portions to the sides of me that have fallen away; some of those chunks are floating nearby; some of them have melted and evened in temperature with the fluid water and disappeared. But my goal is to be completely shattered with only small chunks left floating and ready to be melted.

Remember how I said that I have been on a diet/fasting-thing? Well, the day after I wrote that entry I woke up and everything was different in my heart. I no longer had the strength to withhold food from myself nor did I feel like it was necessary to do so, and I didn't even feel guilty. It was like God had moved on, and withdrawn that radical path from my options. Back to the complacent, common path.

I recently read a story of a technique a parent was using to potty-train her three year old boy. "The wise mother cheerfully said to the boy, "Son, Mother has decided that you are just not old enough to be eating sweets, so until you get a little bigger and stop pottying in your clothes, you will not be allowed anything sweet." For a week he seemed to be... monkish about the sweets.... Then the day for French toast came around. Not eating syrup, they were allowed one teaspoon of powdered sugar per toast. After watching the other children receive their powdered sugar, the forlorn fellow said to mama, "I sure do like powdered sugar on my French toast." "I know you do," she said, "but you are not old enough yet." After his deprived breakfast of plain French toast, he climbed down, walked around to his mother, and with all the soberness of one making a revolutionary, life-time decision, he announced, "Mother, I am ready to stop wearing a diaper. Take it off." That was it. From that moment on, he took himself to the toilet. A week later, the little man, now possessed of a more disciplined character, climbed up to the table, sat down on his dry pants and had his French toast crowned with a spoon of powdered sugar." (Pearl, TUAC, Ch. 11)

I've gotta find my reason to get to the Word of God and prayer, just like that boy needs to remove himself to go into the bathroom to do his business. The reason why He let my power to keep offering up my eating habits disappear, is because He wants to be the source of my vision and strength to accomplish my diet.

After all, imagine how easy it would be for people to marvel at an amazing diet I suddenly find that works so quickly and so assuredly. Just because I'm a Christian? Because I know something they don't? No. That's not good enough. At least, that's God's point. He wants to be there every moment for me so that I will be very forced to admit that it was He who did it from start to finish.

It is a miracle to become a Christian and have rights to the power of Christ. But it's all training on my part to utilize any of it for myself. He let me see how sweet it could be. But when I said no as I have so far in my life for striving to remain in fellowship with Him, He took the power away.

He is building His case in my diet and in all my other failures, to help me want to choose willingly to let Him build a daily relationship with Him and I.