Forthright Fixation

I closed the book slowly, my mind still lingering on the final words. A weighty dullness brooded over my senses and all I could think of with any clarity was the world in the story that I had just finished. My discontent and selfishness had found vent as I was carried along by the story and they now wrapped themselves about my heart with renewed power. Longing for something more to satisfy me, something beyond the menial of today and its duties, seemed to almost consume me. It was so subtle and pervasive that I didn’t recognize it, but so powerful that when I did, I was unable to wrench myself free from the grips of the sin that my spirit seemed to be drowning in. The book hadn’t caused me to sin, but it had re-awakened that rebel in my soul who’s always lurking in the dark, and it had overpowered any meager resistance that remained in me. This enemy within is there, ever ready to pounce and lay hold of all my desires and control them wholly.

Look! A host of wretchedness: Pride. Selfishness. Anger. Bitterness. Unrepentance. Lust. Envy. Malice. Ungratefulness. Rivalry. Contentiousness. Laziness.

You see that list above? That’s me. And I can’t shake who I am. My very being, my very nature, is consumed by my worst enemy—myself. Day by day this rot increases in my soul, and day by day I become more blind and numb to it. I am steadily becoming more unlike what I was intended, what I was created to be. This rot and filth are at the core of who I am, and the façade I’ve kept up for so long is cracking with the internal pressure from the buildup of sludge inside. The grotesque reality of who I am is about to burst the seams of my spanking clean, Sunday best exterior. Everything about me is in utter and total revolt against all that is good and holy—against the One who made me and established the laws of this world.

Pretty is as pretty does, I’m told. True enough, and I’ll add to the saying. Pretty is as pretty’s soul is. And mine? It’s a rebel, hating God. Hating His law and being the most ungrateful wretch in light of His goodness. Everything within me screams in rightful terror at the sight of God—He can only have the deepest, most righteous wrath toward a gruesome creature like me. God is holy. He is perfect, unable to bear the sight of any blemish. I was made to magnify and display His perfection and glory in every fiber of my being. Yet, I’m all blemish—worse than that, I don’t even really care about His holiness and my wretchedness. Without His law to tell me how wicked I am, I would never know the depth of my own monstrosity. He, the Sovereign Lord of all creation, has established His laws for His creation from the dawn of time, demanding holiness worthy of His presence. And I have spurned Him and His glory and traded all the scintillating glories of His presence and the matchless wonderfulness that it is to behold the beauty of His face for my own scummy, hollow vanities and refuse. What else can such behavior call for but immediate, total, and fearsome justice? I deserve the deepest, darkest hell imaginable, for I have marred, nay, destroyed the image of God that He created in me and in its place I have lifted up my own shabby self-portrait.

When I look at myself with honesty—or at least, as much honesty as I can bear—I know that I can never measure up to His holiness. I am helpless to even want to change myself and to love Him. He in His glory and beauty and perfection is the furthest thing from what my soul, alone in the natural, would ever aspire to love and imitate. I am the most crusty and hard-bitten rebel to His rule. My very nature is not only contrary to His nature, but actively fighting against His authority as Sovereign Lord with every smidge of power in my being. Not only am I opposing Him, but He is the very thing I need the most. Without Him to sustain and uphold me, I am dead.

Initially created to love beauty—to love Him—to delight in His ways and His presence, and made in His image to bring Him glory, I was born under the curse of sin and a slave bearing Adam’s shackles. Yet, Creator for Whom I was created is now my Enemy, for I have fallen under the shadow of death through my iniquity. He is the most fearsome and terrible foe to be conceived by a human mind, since, as the holy Lord of creation and Ruler of mankind, He requires righteousness of His subjects. Yet, I am a rebel and a traitor who has spurned Him and rejected His holy rule. I am rightfully deserving of the awful wrath of the holy God—for I was made in His image, and through sin, I have marred and perverted His image in me. And that deserves eternal and terrible wrath; that cries out for the justice of a holy King.

And there’s nothing stopping Him from pouring that wrath out on all mankind for walking this very road I have found myself on.

Nothing, that is, but the risen Son of God interceding for His children.

To be continued on Wednesday…

Filed under: Conviction, Forgiven, Grace, Humility, Knowing God, Weakness