The next two years were filled with joy and suffering, peace and calamity, enlightenment and confusion, direction and aimless wandering. Within the confinements of my heart was a war, a war for my affections and worship. Later, I would learn that this war is not confined solely within my own heart, but is happening in the hearts of every human being living on this earth. As hard as that is to acknowledge, it is even harder sometimes to acknowledge that God is in the works of restoring us.
Last summer, God blessed me with an opportunity to embark on a journey overseas to share the Gospel with college students. While I was there, I was constantly being poured into, the Gospel was shaping my heart, and I began to feel hopeful for my return home. I had been struggling with habitual sin for the past two years and had confidence that after this trip, I would be completely redeemed in these areas. God had other plans.
If I were to preface my past semester with one paragraph, I would have to start with an excerpt from Paul Tripp's book, Broken-Down House:
"It's like what happens to some of us when the car begins to break down. At first your mechanically untrained ears are assaulted by a sound the car has never made before. This unearthly screech elicits fear in your mind and dismay in your heart. But for reasons you don't understand the car continues to run. For the first few days the screech drives you crazy until it seems like you're praying your way from one destination to the next. Then you begin to think the car may run much longer than you had first expected. So you cope by playing the radio loud enough to mask the noise. Before long you don't even have to do that. Your ears have become so accustomed to the screech that you don't hear it anymore. You no longer drive around fearing the imminent demise of your vehicle. You have completely forgotten that your car is in a state of terminal mechanical distress. So you are shocked when one morning it simply refuses to start (Tripp, 2011)."
"Oh no. Ok. Oh well..."
Stepping off of that plane last summer, I thought I was done struggling with the habitual sin that I had faced every day, even prior to becoming a Christian. I thought that I was completely redeemed in that area and that I could resist any temptation that beckoned me to turn my affections away from God and to that sin. Notice anything wrong with that sentence? Hmm.. perhaps it was the constant use of the pronoun, "I". Maybe it was the thought that I could resist temptation or that I was done struggling. Despite the impossible and false reality I had created in my mind, I was WRONG, wrong. I know, we can all understand what that word means, but I just want to emphasize it's significance again, because I was so WRONG, wrong. You may have already known that without me even having to restate it, but the truth was... I didn't.
"Oh no..."
The day the temptation returned, the first thought that came to mind was, "OH NO!" I knew something was not right. Returning to Tripp's metaphor, it was like the first time I heard a sound coming from my car that it had never made before. At first, I began to seek intense accountability and tried to just ignore it, eventually, I gave in. I remember the guilt and shame that met me right in that place as I fell down once again. Oh no.
You would think that this is the section that brings me the most heartache, but it is not. The later sections are what bring tears to my eyes. Because in this section, I was at least feeling something. Eventually, waves of discouragement flooded my heart and it slowly hardened. I began to fill my vision with my behaviors, and they served as constant reminders that I was three things: A failure, neglected, and unchangeable.
"Ok..."
As those lies crystallized within this hardened heart, I began to feel numb. I was no longer wanting to change... I was OK. There was "nothing wrong with me", and quite frankly, I was just wanting to scrape by with as minimal effort as possible. I was merely "surviving". Every time the Gospel was presented to me, I felt a sense of threat, because it was challenging me... and I didn't feel the need to be challenged. I was satisfied with the way things were going because I was tired of struggling... so, I settled. I thought I was "resting", but what I was really doing was creating more chaos.
"Oh well..."
The part that pains me more than ever is here. "OK" evolved into, "Oh well." At this point, you would find me lying in the fetal position on the ground. Hopeless. Seemingly abandoned.
I had cultivated a home for lies within me and they ruled my heart. I looked in the mirror and told myself how much I hated myself, daily. I gave up... No amount of encouragement, accountability, and expression of love directed towards myself was effective because I had built a wall around myself and the only citizens within that wall were lies... Everything else was completely foreign to me.
With hopelessness reigning my heart, I was enabled to continue living in my sin and not have to feel anything about it. The moment I heard anything resembling truth, I was quick to justify myself. At this point, "I was not responsible for my sin". I blamed family, friends, stress, sadness, loneliness... anything and everything except for myself. That was my way of staying blind to my state of ,"terminal mechanical distress".
I had lived in a state of "Oh well" for weeks. In retrospect, I see that God had NOT abandoned, neglected, and/or given up on me. He had provided me with ways out when I was tempted, He had spoken truth me to me through people and multiple events over and over again, and He also blessed me, undeservingly, several times. Through all the chaos, it took God Himself, speaking to me, through a speaker, at that very same conference where I had first come to know Him... There, He told me that the problem... was me.
From there, I began connecting the dots of things He had been teaching me, even during those very dark times when I had felt abandoned. He showed me that I do not produce heart change, that I needed to stop filling my vision with the behaviors and instead fill my vision with Jesus, and lastly, that Jesus needed to be my treasure. These things needed to be recognized and believed in order for my heart to change. As I sat there, bewildered, I felt His presence there with me, & I humbly asked Him to break the walls down.
- I am a failure, neglected, and unchangeable. He broke it down.
- I hate myself. He broke it down.
- I am ashamed. He broke it down.
- I don't want to fight anymore. He broke it down.
Little by little, the walls tumbled to the ground and do you know what was left?
Jesus. And He says...
- You are loved, you are Mine, you are in process.
- I love you, and from that love, you can love yourself & others.
- "There is therefore now NO condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus"
- "For God did not give us a spirit of fear but of but of power and love and self-control."
The me that is left is not one who is faced with "Oh no", "Ok", or "Oh well" when temptation tries to lure me back. And temptation still comes. The me that stands here is not pointing fingers or self-justifying. The Christeena Nicole Curtner that is left is one that is justified only through Jesus, is covered daily in His Grace, and is in process.
"Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus (Phil 1:6)."
The Gospel is what justified me and it is what is sanctifying me, today, until the day of Christ Jesus.
God gave me this story as a reminder for myself and for anyone who reads this. That reminder is that God is in the process of restoring us all, and He has promised to never give up until it is finished. If this story serves as anything, it is proof of that.
Take heart, brothers and sisters, HE has Overcome.
Christeena
