Jonathan Edward's Resolutions

Jonathan Edwards had a will-power the likes of which I can't even begin to comprehend (or perhaps it is rather a faith in Christ the likes of which I can't comprehend). He wrote and lived by a list of very demanding Resolutions. I can hardly even bear the imagining of how heavy such weight would be on the mind, desiring to accomplish so much all at once. 

Most of his resolutions scare me, and many seem to come from a place of understanding, seriousness of faith and desperation that I don't think I've yet come to, but there are certain ones that I currently dream of having the faith to live by. Perhaps you might be inspired by them as well, and might go forward in faith to practice them. 

Resolved, never to do anything, which I should be afraid to do, if it were the last hour of my life.

Resolved, that I will not give way to that listlessness which I find unbends and relaxes my mind from being fully and fixedly set on religion [on Christ], whatever excuse I may have for it-that what my listlessness inclines me to do, is best to be done, etc.

Resolved, whenever my feelings begin to appear in the least out of order, when I am conscious of the least uneasiness within, or the least irregularity without, I will then subject myself to the strictest examination.

Resolved, to study the Scriptures so steadily, constantly and frequently, as that I may find, and plainly perceive myself to grow in the knowledge of the same.

Resolved, never to count that a prayer, nor to let that pass as a prayer, nor that as a petition of a prayer, which is so made, that I cannot hope that God will answer it; nor that as a confession, which I cannot hope God will accept.

Resolved, to examine carefully, and constantly, what that one thing in me is, which causes me in the least to doubt of the love of God; and to direct all my forces against it.

Resolved, whenever I do any conspicuously evil action, to trace it back, till I come to the original cause; and then both carefully endeavor to do so no more, and to fight and pray with all my might against the original of it.

Resolved, to improve every opportunity, when I am in the best and happiest frame of mind, to cast and venture my soul on the Lord Jesus Christ, to trust and confide in him, and consecrate myself wholly to him; that from this I may have assurance of my safety, knowing that I confide in my Redeemer

Resolved, very much to exercise myself in this all my life long, with the greatest openness I am capable of, to declare my ways to God, and lay open my soul to him: all my sins, temptations, difficulties, sorrows, fears, hopes, desires, and every thing, and every circumstance.

Resolved, never to give over, nor in the least to slacken my fight with my corruptions, however unsuccessful I may be.

Resolved, if ever I shall fall and grow dull, so as to neglect to keep any part of these Resolutions, to repent of all I can remember, when I come to myself again.

See the full list of his 70 Resolutions here.

Why I Love the Downtown East Side

I really love the people of the Downtown East Side.

I run to them.

And I've been trying to figure out why.

I think it’s because nothing about them threatens me.

I'm not scared of drug addicts or their dealers, prostitutes or their pimps, the mentally ill, the thieves, the compulsive-liars, the violent, the murderers.

I think that's because the faith that comes easiest to me is trusting God with big things. The only reason that the people of the DTES might scare me is if I feared for my life. And I don't. 

And I've never been scared of strangers.

I actually adore strangers...

Who I am scared of are my peers. 

I run from them.

And I've been trying to figure out why. 

I think it’s because I feel threatened by them. 

I'm so frightened of them that sometimes I even fear them in stranger form (rare but it happens).

I have an on and off relationship with Facebook because it's full of peers who scare me.

The following scare me:

1. Peers who appear to be pretty.

2. Peers who appear to be self-confident.

3. Peers who appear to be happy.

4. Peers who appear to be well-liked (..popular).

And these people are even more frightening in real life than online.

The inferiority I feel in response to them is crippling. 

I see them.

But I don’t really know them.

So I can’t see any flaws or vulnerabilities.

They see me.

But they don’t really know me.

And I don’t think I have any perfection to show them.

So they just see flaws and vulnerabilities.

But they don’t understand them.

I don't want to be friends with them.

I want to forget about them.

I want to run from them.

It's been this way as long as I can remember.

And I've been trying to figure out why. 

I think it’s because I'm scared of them creating a ‘me’ that’s not me.

Strangers (God love'm) are great because:

1) They, by definition, have no understanding of me.

2) I neither expect, require nor desire for them to understand me. 

I like my people to fall into one of two categories; either they know me deeply, or they don't know me at all.

Peers make me feel uncomfortable and self-conscious and insecure because they know things about me but they don't actually know me. It makes me seriously frightened to have people thinking they know a 'me' that isn't actually me. I feel trapped in their perception of me. It feels like the real me is being suffocated, buried, deemed irrelevant. It seems like people don't actually realize that they don't know me. Or that they don't actually care to know me. 

I want to hide from people who assume they know who I am but who have never known or understood me. 

.... My brother has described having a similar feeling. That is, it makes him extremely uncomfortable when people who don't deeply know him make a verbal judgement or observation of him. It seems wrong to him that they should do that. 

All of this is the cause of a major problem.

It makes it impossible for me to love my peers. 

Don't be fooled into thinking I'm virtuous for loving the people of the DTES. It's easy for me to love them because they are strangers. I feel free to be myself with them. I feel free to be vulnerable with them. I feel free to be weak with them. I expect nothing from them. I don’t need to try and earn their love because it doesn't matter if they love me or not.

My affinity for the people of the DTES is primarily selfish.

Who I run to, and who I run from, is based on my desire to uphold and protect me. 

And I am so ashamed.

There is nothing present here other than self-love.

I love people who either love me (know me),

Or people who I don't need to love me (know me).

(I think being loved has a lot to do with being known).

I have loved me.

I have not loved people who don't love me.

Yet I think that in order to love Christ I must obey Him.

And in order to obey Christ I must love people who don't love me in return.

My fear of not being loved by you is keeping me from loving you. 

Forgive me.

I have not been able to love you because I have not believed that Christ's love is enough for me.

I have not believed that it is enough to have Him know me.

If I believed that, I would be able to love you without you truly knowing me.

I would be able to love you unconditionally. 

I would be able to love you like you need to be loved.

Yet I have joy because I believe that all this and more will be possible.

Because He is faithful to finish the work He has begun in me (Philippians 1:6).

Because He continues to teach and guide me (Psalm 32:8).

Because He promises His help, His strength and His victory (Isaiah 41:10).

Because His power is made perfect in my weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9).

And, of course, His grace is sufficient for me (2 Corinthians 12:9). 

Therefore,

Having been justified by faith, 

I have peace with God 

through our Lord Jesus Christ, 

through whom also we have access by faith 

into this grace in which we stand (!!!!!!!)

and rejoice (!!!)

in hope (!!!!)

of the glory of God (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!).

And not only that, 

J

but we also glory in tribulations, 

knowing that tribulation 

produces perseverance; 

and perseverance, 

character; 

and character, 

hope.

(WOOOHOOOOOOOOOO)

Now hope 

DOES NOT DISAPPOINT

(amazing stuff)

because the GREAT LOVE of God has been poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

Sincerely,

the much-read, much-true and much-wonderful Romans 5:1-5

Clinging

I think I live my life on repeat.
Made possible by an abysmal memory.

I mean I have the same problems over and over again.
And I never recall what I learned the time before.

I spent most of today numbly discouraged that though I loved truth yesterday, today the memory of it wasn't even strong enough to get my bible opened up in front of me.

I stayed in bed all day.

Sleep numbed the discouragement of once again preferring selfishness and sin to God.
And, as per usual, trying again after having already failed was not even an option.
Obviously yesterday’s reflection didn't cause a miraculous change.

An optimistic perspective:
Continued failure = A continued reminder that I can’t depend on myself to do this.
Not my own learning.
Not my own desires.

The following is a not-so-old journal entry.

April 14th, 2013
Confession time: God I am so stupid. I am right back to being sinful again even after you gave me a week of such blessing. My thoughts are so inconsistent that I could never trust them. I am so thankful that you are so much bigger than I, that your truth is so incorruptible and you are so constant. I can do nothing but just believe that you will continually be there, be the same, and be loving me while I falter about. I've just got nothing good to offer. I've just got nothing in myself to be confident about. You might as well use me because I’m useless to anyone else, even myself. I don’t even have a passion, not even ambition enough to get myself out of bed in the morning. I am so weak I can do nothing other than cling to you. Please keep making me weaker. Keep making it so that I have nothing to offer people but you. Keep making it so that I have to desire only you because you are clearly the only One I have. Keep showing me my sin and making me repent. I am so sorry for the selfishness that so frequently overwhelms me. Sorry for the bitterness and entitlement that my heart somehow still produces. Sorry for the lack of rejoicing in you and the lack of trusting that comes when I get self-centered. Thank you for not abandoning me when I sin against you. Thank you for making me so at home with just you and you, that I am able to so gladly be alone with you.

Right now this truth is my hope: 

Keep on confessing to Him.

Keep on hoping in Him.

That’s all I can handle right now.

Confession of Selfish Ambition

Early in my faith, I read and re-read passages of the New Testament that described the new man, or life in the Spirit (Galatians 5:16-26, Ephesians 4:17-32 etc). I would do the same with passages that described the carnal life (try Romans 1:29 – 31). And while reading these, I would anxiously try to fix the adjectives in my mind, so that knowing the goal, I could be sure to meet it. I needed to make my life like this in order to please God (and myself..).

The more I did this, the more anxious I became. Each day I was more convinced that this standard set for me was absolutely impossible.

I am definitely one who fears failure, and under normal circumstances, I can avoid failure by only pursuing goals that I’m fairly certain I will meet. I would rather save myself anxiety by leaving the failed thing forgotten then fight the hopelessness I experience when I fail. I choose to do things that I’m fairly certain I will succeed at. Getting back on the horse frightens me like no other.

So I resigned myself to being unrighteous. 
No success being righteous = no more attempts to be righteous = no more failure.

The problem, which I am thankful for, is that I couldn't get my desire to be righteous to go away. Thus ‘resigning myself to unrighteousness’ manifested itself in the form of sleep (in which I could forget that I couldn't achieve the one thing I wanted).

Notice that it was righteousness that I wanted – or my own success in it – no word of righteousness in Christ.

It’s like I was trying to protect my personal supply of hope. Since every failure depleted the supply, I thought not trying to be righteous would keep me from becoming hopeless. In reality, my personal supply of hope went M.I.A, and I ended up hopelessly unrighteous.

And so I slept more.  

Clearly there is an abundance of sin involved here. My self-reliance, to begin with (if I can’t do it, then I give up). My pride (I’m not going to keep trying just so I can keep failing). Fear. Anxiety. Selfish ambition. Lack of faith in general. All focus on me. No focus on Christ. And I wasn't acknowledging my failure to fight any of those sins.

The entire situation made me very much want to take up this defense: “I’m not under the law, I’m under grace, so I can sin and it’s already dealt with, forgiven, I don’t have to deal with it”.

Unfortunately I already knew the rebuttal. Thanks to Paul, as well as the people who managed to get this sinful before I did. And God, of course, for arranging it all. 

Paul: “Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? Certainly not! Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are the one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness?” (Romans 6:15-16).

I have so misunderstood so many things in so many ways. Primarily, I am under grace in Christ. If I am not living and abiding in Christ, I am not living and abiding in His grace, and I am powerless against sin. What is more, by trying to be comfortable with sin rather than be present in Christ, I was presenting myself as a slave to sin. I was inviting sin to have dominion over me. And it did, quite thoroughly.

***

Some thoughts from Dietrich Bonhoeffer to add to the mix. 
For the thinkers who never stop.

Many of the errors I made regarding my own righteousness I also made regarding the righteousness of my fellow believers. 

The two seem to run quite parallel.

Bonhoeffer ‘On Christian Fellowship’

“Christian brotherhood (and the Christian life) is not an ideal that we realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we participate. The serious Christian is very likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and try to realize it (that’s what I did exactly!!).  But God’s grace speedily shatters such dreams. Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by great delusionment with other Christian’s in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves... every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves his dream of community (or his life!) more than the community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial. God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious (happened to me, still does). The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community (or his life) demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God Himself accordingly”.



OTHER LINKS YOU MIGHT LIKE:

Check this out. A thought-provoking discussion of striving vs. grace between Pastor Tullian Tchividjian (Billy Graham's grandson) and Jonathan Merritt.  

And check this out. Micah's experience has some overlap with my own, so maybe it does with yours too. 
Also check out his blog and amble over to it's popular posts (top right).