Future Drama

A lot can happen in a short amount of time. I’ve been accepted into Baylor’s doctoral program, starting this fall, and I’ve been fired from my job. That makes three consecutive non-academic jobs that I’ve been fired from. The only job I was able to maintain, for more than a year and a half, was teaching. Perhaps this is a suggestion as to where my future lies, or maybe I’m just a failure. Time will tell. 

I say “Time will tell” and not “God will tell” because God doesn’t seem to say those kinds of things to me. I don’t get clear leadings from the Spirit, or dreams or words of knowledge. On occasion I will be overwhelmed with piercing emotion and affection, which I interpret to be a caress from the Lord. But a crystalline directive? No.

Doubtless this is due to my own sinfulness. I still struggle with sin, an inordinate amount it seems to me. I lack self-control in my appetites, I am greedy and selfish and afraid. This surely must be the kink in the connection that disallows the Lord from making His will known to me in unambiguous terms. I had a chat will my friend Nathan this evening, and he was saying that the cure to sin and temptation is to focus on and walk with Jesus. I agree. So why don’t I? Why can’t I?

I am stuck with a conundrum. For if the way to avoid sin and grow in my relationship with God is self-discipline, that is, to direct my thoughts in ever-increasing frequency and duration upon His wonderful face, then I will be unable to ever accomplish growth in this regard since one of my struggles is self-discipline. If the means by which I can overwhelmingly conquer, as the NASB version of the Bible puts Romans 8:37 it, is a quality that I need the Lord’s intervention for in order to achieve the Lord’s intervention, then my situation is even more desperate than Paul’s in Romans 7! I need self-discipline in order to gain self-discipline; but I can’t achieve self-discipline if I lack self-discipline which is what I need to attain self-discipline. 

There is no condemnation for those who walk according to the Spirit, Romans 8:1 says. Fine, I’ll buy that. But what if I am unable to walk according to the Spirit? Perhaps I missed a lesson somewhere, but that’s always been my downfall. I understand and believe the Life more Abundant thanks to our New Identity in Christ argument, but how to effect this in my experience? I want to hear the voice of the Lord, I want to see Him at work in the lives of others through me. I want to be conformed more closely to His image, the likeness of Jesus. Oh God, I want that! 

But no matter how I try, how good my intentions are, no matter whether I pray the armor of God on or invite Jesus to live in and through me, I still stumble and fall. I still give way to lust and gluttony. I still loathe the figure that glares out of the mirror. I still look on with envy the couples I see around me, even those whom I love and admire. I still covet the presence of my friends and family, and daydream of winning the lottery or marrying a rich girl. Foolish fantasies. I still worry about grad school and surviving until then, and through the process, and writing a dissertation, and learning Spanish, and making ends meet, and finding a church, and making new friends, and everything else that looms in the oncoming future. And of course I look at my failings and despair curls around my soul like Shelob spinning her monstrous webs.

Will I ever be free? Will I ever see any progress? What remains? What else can I, must I do? If I must surrender all to Jesus, how can I? What happens if I can’t?