Weak like christian squash

"If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God." Hebrews 10 vs 26 and 27. I would consider myself a very poorly disciplined person. I can never seem to push on through stuff. New years resolutions, fasts, hard and fast desicions, they seem to be useless because in any moment of weakness I'll give in and then give up. I hate that I have weakness, if my life could be summed up in a phrase it may well be "fear of failure". I want so bad to get it right, I know so bad I don't.



The thing is, Christian Spirituality to me, is just a journey towards being perfect, being more like Jesus. Which it is, but that's not really the whole story. The better I feel I'm doing, the worse I start to get. It's like in all of it, I'm doing something wrong. Which I am. And this is how I am coming to realise that weakness is not all bad, because, as I'm realising, it hasnt got the last say...



So Im reading Genesis at the moment. And there's this guy, Abram who turned into Abraham because God told him to. Everyone thinks Abrahams got alot of things right, which he does because he trusts God. But then there's some other guys, heroes of their time and race...Moses and Joshua and then Samson and moving through time, David, Solomon. I've missed plenty of the heroes out because there is quite alot. Not all of them were that great. Samson, for example, killed one thousand men with jaw of a donkey. In all my getting it right, I'm pretty convinced God wouldn't be too thrilled with my escapades if I done the same. And that other guy David, he was a legend, there's still a star around named after him. He's big. But then this one time, he looks at a naked lady, tells her to sleep with him, (Oh yeah and by the way, she's married), then kills her husband and makes it look like an accident!!! But God, who I would have thought would be like furious and like send the guy to hell or something, says, and I quote, "he's a man after my own heart". Eh?



And so somehow, I'm running after the same God who said this. And everytime I look in lust, everytime I wind Steve up, everytime I have no time for a young person or I let hatred sit in my stomach, I realise I can't take the burning failure, and it does burn.



The hero list doesnt end which is great. Everyone loves a hero, but more than that, everyone loves a NEW hero right? So moving on, this other new guy shows up, he's called Jesus, and that's a weird name, but in his time it was like Josh, which isnt that weird. And so this guy, Josh, he claims that he IS God. Eh? What, so all these heroes who loved God...they loved HIM? And then Josh (who by the way, I have become quite convinced IS God) doesnt kill anyone with a jaw bone of any animal, doesnt look at any woman in lust, doesnt have enormous strength like Samson, isn't a King like David. And yet he's considered the greatest of all the heroes. He says some rather strange things. Like there was this group at the time, who were really, really good. I want to be perfect? These guys WERE perfect, they done everything right. But He said horrible things to them like "hypocrites" and things, if he said them to me, I'd be upset, because after all, I'm trying to BE him.

In the end, they killed Josh because he wound some important people up too much. There is a happy ending to that story though. But even following that, there's this OTHER guy called Paul. He says some weird things. Like this, in a letter to some friends..."Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses" and "For when I am weak, then I am strong" and then God says to him "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." It doesnt all seem to add up, or maybe it does, either way it can be confusing. Because, Paul realised that there was something special about Josh and he considered himself a slave to the man. But Josh said really difficult things like "For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven". But these guys were PERFECT!

But then we come back to Paul who's convinced God is saying that weakness isn't that bad. And there's that guy from before, Samson, he was strong and like all of them older heroes, they saw that strength was like this thing that God will use...and He did. So there seems to be this double-sidedness to God, or the heroes or whatever. Because Gods the strongest ever, and his Son told us that we must be perfect to get where we wanna go. But then calls the guys who are perfect, hypocrites. And then Paul starts saying something along the lines of "weakness isn't all bad, in fact, God uses that to his gain". But, surely to be good representatives of God, we should be perfect like him?!

So I'm stuck. And I want to follow Josh. And I want to know God. And so I try my best to be like him, because he says to follow him. And so when I learn a new tip or idea, it goes in the noggin and I then start to try and be abit more like this or more like that. It's all so dis-heartening. This one time, when I was abit younger, though not too much younger, I decided I'd make a list of the stuff in me that wasn't right, and pray about it, and focus to change it. Everyday the list got longer and longer and longer. And then I began to realise maybe there was these underlying issues that lead to the other issues. So maybe I only had to pray through like two or three issues and then ALL the issues would sort out. But then, it all got rather confusing. Like, learning what the issues were. But then new ones would become apparent and that didn't matter because the ones I DID know, weren't getting sorted anyway!

Why did Josh hang around with sinners? With those who didnt do anything right? Why did his right-hand man deny him three times, remembering that Josh said that those who deny him, he too, will deny them? And why did Peter suffer with jealousy even when he was in the business of "Josh"? Why did Jesus call those who were "spiritually mature" and doing things "right" hypocrites, proud, snakes etc etc. I seem to have been missing something. And then there's grace...

Words can't encapsulate what grace is. To hear it, is terrifying and offensive. To get a glimpse is to get a glimpse of heaven. The other night, I lay on my bed, frustrated at my failings and how crap I'd been towards others that day. And I was reading this book "The ragamuffin Gospel" by an Irish-American "vagabond evangelical" as like to be known. And it said that grace is about being accepted...where...you...are. That once we accept that we are full of crap, and that we are full of beauty, but ultimately, its God. The freedom to run after this man called Josh, through addictions, through habits, through wrong mindsets and know that somehow, they aren't the point. Josh is always there to be found. He likes us. It suddenyl clicked.

And so I want to grow and mature etc, but if I don't, if people observe me as immature and irresponsible, thats not the point. I will run after this man, to the point of my own death, not because I can, or because I'm strong enough to push through, I'm not. "Freely you recieved so freely you shall give". Paul said that. He understood that weakness isn't the point. That God works through that. And the heroes, the ones of old, they were'nt that great. Moses told God that he wasnt gonna say a word to anyone because he wasn't good at it. Samson fell into pretty much any temptation laid in his path, we covered David. It was something else in them that was heroic. They decided that God and Josh were worth running after depstie weakness and because of that, God used their weakness. They decided that God was bigger than their weakness. That's alot harder to do than you think.

And so I keep on sinning, mortal and venial sins alike and I yet I know that somehow, it will all be alright and God loves me as I am. A clever man named Clive once said “The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because he loves us.” I believe I agree.