Sometimes I feel like my faith is an old nuclear waste site.
It’s some years after the fallout. The birds have returned. The trees are sprouting soft, hopeful leaves. The worms are doing their busy work in the dirt. From the looks of it, you’d never know there had been desolation here.
But there’s a low hum on the Geiger counter that worries me. There’s always the chance of stepping some place toxic. And the poisons linger in the soil.
I don’t want to overstate this: I didn’t experience spiritual abuse or have some spectacular falling away. No, the meltdown of my faith was mundane: a slow leaching of my sense that I knew how to be a Christian “successfully.” A knowledge that reading the Bible, reading Christian books, and spiritual disciplines that were supposed to encourage me, all made me shrivel in anxiety.
I knew I should be coming to God in the mornings—it even said so in the Psalms. I knew I should be reading more, fasting more, praying more, serving more, doing more.
When I didn’t—when I didn’t even want to—I felt ashamed.
That shame eating at my soul kept me from God at the very moment I tried to find God.
I abandoned the practices. I clung to God’s ever-present love. I raised Paul’s standard of righteousness by faith, not works. But after a while, you wonder how to be a Christian if you can’t do the Christian-ish things that even Paul says you should.
The other day, I saw that Frank Viola is going to offer a new course about being indwelt by God. Indwelt: that is the life I am looking for. More and more, I’m seeing that the shoulds are the symptom of the biggest problem: me doing the work of faith instead of God doing it.
Indwelt, I said to myself, with a thirst in the syllables.
I downloaded an introductory podcast, my heart filled with hope. Perhaps this could be a step towards clearing my soil of poisons. Perhaps this could be a way of reclaiming this almost-wasteland.
I listened to Viola preach–on the garden, the tree of life, and God’s good life. And I liked the message, the theology, the imagery.
But still, I felt anxious. Deeply anxious.
I felt afraid of getting my hopes up.
I felt afraid of going back to the shoulds.
I felt sure I couldn’t be a disciple without making a rigid to-do list.
I felt afraid of causing another meltdown.
I felt afraid, even, of trying.
I turned off the sermon, angry with myself. I’ve been a Christian for decades now. Why am I still an infant, unable to take the basic steps of faithfulness? Why does it seem like my attempts to build a foundation of faith undermine it at the same time?
And then I did something new. I prayed this prayer:
Lord, help. HELP. Help me not feel anxious. Help me not feel afraid. Give me the desires for these good things. Help me do them in freedom, instead of anxiety. Give me a joyful desire for the Word, for study, for discipline. I want to be close to you, Lord. I need you. But I can’t do it myself.
The answer was immediate.
Precious child, this is indwelling.
Suddenly, I understood what the heck Viola had been talking about. Viscerally.
I looked at my iPhone with new eyes. Because I realized I could choose whatever I felt led to, prayerfully, joyfully, and God would be there.
I could prayerfully choose to do the podcast, and God would be there.
And I could prayerfully choose not to do it, and call to Him in that decision, and He would be there, too. He could find some other way to teach me. He could give me the desire for what I needed.
It wasn’t really what I did that was important—how complicated or Christian-sounding, or “sold-out” it was. I could show up as I was, wherever I was. I could ask for Him to be there.
And God would do the rest.
I could be honest.
I could be indwelt.
I could be reclaimed.
I could have Christ, alive, working in me, instead of me, half-dead, trying and failing to clear out old poisonous patterns that sickened me.
No, I need to experience the holy freedom of giving up. I could accept that I was the merest infant carried in its Parent’s arms. I could pray that all things needful would be done for me.
Done for me.
Because it’s not Frank Viola’s words that will redeem my aching, fretful soil. Not my work or effort. No, it is Jesus Christ in power and glory that will purify each grain of sand or particle of humus. All of it is precious to him. None of it is beyond God’s reach.
And all of it will be reclaimed in God’s good time.
Originally published at SheLoves Magazine
