Is Change Possible?

Iniquity, transgression, and sin are so deeply woven into the warp and the woof of our humanity such that from time to time, I am sure that you find yourself speculating whether change is even possible. On a personal level, I certainly wonder. In fact, I often think that I would find it easier in a desert to escape my shadow at noon than to escape my own flesh which is always so fiendishly creative in iniquity.

On Wednesday night at our Dead Theologians Society meeting, however, I stumbled across some questions that just might give us a leg up in the battle. I found them in David Powilson's excellent little book, Seeing with New Eyes. These queries helped me understand how my thoughts, desires, and actions connect (or disconnect) from God in the moment of temptation. 

The Whispering Lies of Lust

His first question has two parts and goes something like this: What lies am I believing, and what lusts am I embracing in this sinful moment/pattern of life? Powlison exhorts:

"Dig under irritability, selfishness, hopelessness, escapism, self-righteousness, self-pity, crippling fears, complaining—whatever—and you will find a mosaic of specific lies believed and cravings pursued. Scripture equips you to get at them, to draw them into the light."

Let’s apply his counsel to a familiar situation. Say that you are late for an important appointment, and the driver in front of you is driving too slowly. You feel impatient and honk angrily at him to get moving.  What's going on in your heart at that moment? Why are you so impatient? Well, there could be a host of reasons. Perhaps you are a person who likes to be on time because it makes other people feel late when they arrive after you. Or perhaps you are enslaved to people-pleasing; you want people to like you and fear falling out of their favor. Maybe that's why you are late in the first place; you don't want to offend the person who dropped in unannounced at your office. You hate saying no and fear that saying so might offend. This refusal has the potential to make life quite complicated. Fearing offending the unannounced visitor, you now are almost certain to offend your next client. What to do? Well, speed is the obvious option (what lies are you believing here?), which explains your anger with the slow driver in front of you.  The lies justifying your peevish spirit might go something like this: "This man's in my way. I'm more important than he. He's being inconsiderate driving at the speed limit. Can’t he see that I am in a hurry? He probably enjoys holding me up." None of these thoughts are charitable, righteous, or appropriate, but too often, such thoughts make up our unspoken mindset. Bring them out into the open. Refuse to listen to them. Speak to these thoughts with words of truth and light.

What have you done with God?

Question #2: Powilson continues:

"The verbs that relate people to God must become an active part of your thinking. People are always doing something with God. Human beings either love God—or despise him and love something else. We take refuge in God—or flee from him and find refuge somewhere else. We set our hopes in God—or we turn from him and hope in something else. We fear God—or we ignore him and fear something else. Scripture will come to life in new ways as you develop an alertness to how the man-before-God verbs play out in real life."  

In the example above, what is the person doing with God? He is not factoring Him into the equation at all, is he? He is so stressed out about what men might think of him that he has no room for God in his contemplations. This is why he can't say “No” to man because he has already said “No” to God, to God's agenda for his day, to God's clear priorities for whom and for what deserves his attention next in his schedule. It's vital that you see this. At any given moment, we are either honoring God or despising Him, serving Him or defying Him, embracing Him in trust or rejecting Him in search of a better refuge for our weary soul. There is no middle ground. We cannot turn toward God without turning away from our idols, and we cannot turn toward an idol without first turning away from God. If we don't see this, we will inevitably go easy on ourselves for our sins, thinking that we can embrace them and still embrace God. But we just can't. So let me ask you a very direct question: What are you doing with God right now in your life? Are you trusting Him or distrusting Him? Are you prioritizing Him or de-prioritizing Him? Are you building your identity upon Him or upon some other thing or some other person's approval, etc.?

Without Christ, We Can Do Nothing!

Question #3: Concluding, Powilson states:

"By seeing the God-relatedness of all motivation, you see that what is wrong with us calls for a God-related solution: the grace, peace, power, and presence of Jesus Christ. Human motivation is about the vertical dimension. The good news of Christ is no add-on, no religiously-toned way to meet pre-existent desires and needs. Living faith in Jesus Christ is the only real solution, the only sane motivation, the radical alternative to a thousand forms of deviance."

So what does repentance look like for our brother rushing to his appointment? First of all, it begins with him acknowledging that he is enslaved to the fear of man. Almost certainly, this affects all of his relationships. This means that constantly he puts human beings before God. Let me put it bluntly: When I do this, I am honoring the eyes of men and despising the eyes of God.

Secondly, it means that we need to come to God through Christ and ask for blood-bought mercy. Remember that Jesus had to die for this sin, and for this very sin, He did die. More than that, remember that God freely forgives all your sins. From one perspective, therefore, does it matter what men think of you when God has forgiven you for every sin, carte blanche? I know, it does matter in that you could lose your job. But the point I am trying to make is this: Most people try to appear good in the eyes of men as an attempt to cover up just how bad they really are in their own eyes. If we can distract their gaze by showing them how punctual we can be, how funny we can be, how generous we can be, how well-organized we can be (the list just goes on and on), then maybe, just maybe, they might not notice what a screw up we are in every other area of our life. Or, maybe you are one of those omnicompetent people who drinks their own perfectionistic Kool Aid. You really think that you keep all your own rules perfectly and you are really quite proud of yourself. And yet, racing late to this appointment, you are frightened of marring your "perfect record" and that a crack might appear in your very perfect facade. You are a legend in your own mind. There are, to be sure, a few exalted heroes above you in life's pecking order, but at least from your own self-righteous vista, most minions are far beneath you. They are the hoi polloi, and you are much better than they. Maybe you are better, but you are not better than Jesus, and He is the Standard! Make no mistake. 

If people like you were good enough to satisfy God, Jesus’ death would never have been necessary. But people like you are not good enough. We are all earthworms before the blazing sun of God's majesty. "There is no difference.” God says, “All have sinned and fall short of His glory. (Rom. 3:23)" Before you try and plaster over the cracks on the facade of your PR front, take a closer look at them. The front is precisely that, just a front. You are not fooling God. Drop your pretentious self-righteousness and run to Jesus Christ, the only Man good enough to save you from the justice of God. "He came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance!" The very fact that the reproach of one “dropped ball” weighs so heavily on your mind points to the truth. You know that you fall very far short of God’s standards. Your perfect record before the eyes of your colleagues isn’t nearly so good in the eyes of God. You know better than to believe your own PR campaign!

No, we all need Jesus, the worst of us no more than the best and the nest no less than the worst. The wonderful thing is that Jesus will receive any and all who come to Him. The unspoken tragedy over too many lives is that Jesus only excludes those who exclude themselves by not coming to Him for life.