I can't help, but think that I have missed it.
The past few days I have been so focused on myself. I have been putting so much effort into being the better me. I have pointed out my flaws in my heart and have made it my mission in life to rid myself of them. I see poor people and I help them. I see needs and I try to meet them. I know it is wrong to do certain things and so I don't do them. Don't get me wrong I make plenty of mistakes I just am trying to say that I am making an effort to be better. I try to do all of the "right" things in life and I always try to be nice, BUT there is something deeply wrong with me. I can feel it inside of me rotting away my bones and eating away at my life. I am choking, but yet I am trying to do everything right. How can this be? How can I be living this way and be experiencing so much separation from God? How can I be good, but yet feel so dead? What is wrong? "God I thought you said that if I believe you are real and if I live this certain way that I will find life, but GOD just so you know I feel pretty dead. I am trying to be like Christ and to live the way He lived. I see that He cared for the poor so I care for the poor. I see that He poured into people's lives so I pour into people's lives, but just so you know God living like this has not brought me life!"
I find myself in so much distress and I go through the list over and over again trying to find where did I miss it. Go to church... check. Get involved in a campus ministry... check. Get involved in the church... check. Go on a mission trip... check. Feed the poor... check. Help people... check. The list goes on and on and all that I keep on doing is adding more thinking that I must be just missing one more check before I find it. It is a monotonous process of checks and more checks and more stuff to do that ends up draining my life to where I am completely empty. Then I lose my bearings and I forget the truth and cave in to the world and let the world take over me. I let it knock me down and pour me out. I give up because I can't do it!
"I can't do it!"
"I can't do it!"
"I can't do it!"
(Sorry there is no purpose for writing it three times just the fact that I needed to just to remind myself that it is true.)
The truth is that I can't do it... The truth is that, "All have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God (Romans 3:23)." The truth is that, "It is by Grave you (I) have been saved, through faith - and this is not from yourselves (myself), it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast (Ephesians 2:8-9)." The truth is that, "I (Jesus) am the way the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me (Jesus) (John 14:6)." This is truth and I had twisted it... I had missed it.
I lived like Jesus not because of what Jesus did for me, but mainly because I felt good being good. I liked doing good things, because it didn't make Jesus look good it made me look good. I liked trying to be a good person, because it brought glory to my name instead of bringing Glory to God's name. No wonder I feel so dead... It is because I am dead. Only in Christ can you find life, but I was trying to find life in myself and all that I could find was emptiness.
"Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you (Ephesians 5:14)!" The blindfold is off... The great mystery has been solved! Yes I have missed it, but now I receive it. You see I was missing life, because I was missing Christ. I thought that I had Christ because I was living like Him to the best of my ability, but the truth is that I was not receiving Him. The idea is simple and I had completely missed it. I needed to understand that I needed Christ to rescue me from the grave to wake me up. I needed Him to die so that I could have life. Out of this great act of love I now rise up. I now choose to live in Christ, because He did it. He lived it. He perfected it. He made it. I didn't... But I have died with Christ on that cross and when my Savior breathed His last all my transgressions were washed away. When my Savior died so did my miserable, empty life, but when my Savior rose so did I... made whole and new in Him alone.
Church, College students, Christians... WAKE UP AND RISE! No longer live like Christ, but live in Christ. There is the key to finding life.
