So that resolve thing? Yeah, it’s not working.
I keep trying to do things on my own and my resolve lacks results.
So, here’s what I am learning. No amount of doing on my part is going to help. This is a difficult realization for me to admit. You see, I’m a doer and a doer that can’t do anything is a force to be reckoned with. Just ask my husband. I don’t like to wait; I want to take action. I want to develop a plan and implement it. But manipulation of the externals rarely succeeds in bringing about internal change. And therein lies the problem.
This frustration is at the heart of Christian experience, right? The Apostle Paul got it. It has to be God doing the work because we’ve got nothing. No amount of wishful thinking or good intentions is going to accomplish the work He has started. Only He can do that. And so we wait on Him. Argh.
I’m just trying to figure out how to live in that holy dependency. Seriously, how do we practically depend on God for strength? (And don’t comment in Christianese; “let go and let God” just doesn’t deal with this very real struggle honestly enough for me.) I know that trying to “figure out” the mysterious movement of God is a bit of a fool’s errand. But I’ve got to do something!
Often, I feel like there is little point in trying at all: what I want to do I don’t do; but, what I don’t want to do, I do. Yeah, I get that, Paul. For all those areas that need discipline in my life, I am at His mercy. Somewhere between grace and application a balance can be found – not that I’ve found it, I just choose to believe in that hope.
But how do we allow God to work in us to break us free of these chains? I have to believe it is possible and that I’m just a work in progress with a long way to go to completion.
I suppose I should feel it is freeing to know that this work is not up to me. Somehow, that’s not where I’m at and I want to be able to accept that I can’t do it. And I want that to be okay.
Looking for some wisdom? Can you supply it?