Prove it

If I think that I can do something I tend not to say that I can.  I have spent years enjoying the inner pride of accomplishment without verbal warning or boasting.  Maybe some decades past I made a boast and was not able to see it through so now I hide my ambition deep within until I can verity the results, until I can prove it.

            As a follower of Jesus, I ought to live to prove Him as my foundation.  This way of living shows the world around you that you love God and trust Him to take care of you. Yet often the “proving Jesus” way of living is filled with more trust that I desire to give.  Prayer is enjoyable when it is but one option on the table.  When the only thing you have to help you is God, things can be anxious. 

            For the past several years I have battled with an internal infection.  When I feel the symptoms start to return I know that my prayer life increases.  I know that my anxiety also increases.  The cost of medical treatment, the fear of scaring my family with another of my bathroom falls or the simple fact that I am waiting for a time bomb to go off, all work together to increase my anxiety levels.

            As the anxiety increases so does my need to prove to God I am worthy of a healing or some help.  Maybe I will fast some.  As I have already said, I will pray more.  I might gaze into my soul and see if some sin lurking there can be remove so that I am a little more pleasing to the Lord and thus show Him I am worthy of His intervention.  I believe that effort is not in opposition to grace, but seeking to earn a blessing is.  I simply have lived so long in the posture of earning grace that it is hard to imagine another way to live.

            I find my redemption in the character of God. While I was a sinner not seeking the Lord, He cared for me and made a way for me and my issue to be redeemed.  Without telling me, God loved me in practical and healing ways.  The cross of Christ, the created world I live in, the gift of a physical body are all testimonies of God’s character of proving who He is.  God proves His love of me in that while I was a sinner, Jesus died on the cross for me.  I may still think that I need to earn His forgiveness, but the reality is that He has already freely given to me.  Even when my mind is seeking to prove to Him that I am worthy, His actions have proven that I need not bother.  I have lost much time rejoicing in the grace of the Lord.  Spending rather my time in seeking to earn what I have already been given. 

            It was the love of God that has helped me discover this error of living and thought.  God, who loves me, also disciplines me.  Over and over again God has lead me to a place where I desperately need Him and yet I am unable to do anything in my condition to earn a favor from Him.  Broken and helpless I have only Him and find myself  staring in the face of grace and embarrassed in my prideful spirit that seeks to earn everything.  So that man who needs grace is in need of even more grace to cover the need he has and he sin he is manifesting by trying to earn what love gives.

            I never wanted to be a broken person.  I wanted to be good, worthy, honorable and a few dozen other things, but never broken.  Broken is looking more and more like the truth to me.  I think I may have a few other qualities, but when the gaze of pure love shine on them, they too are broken, flawed.  It is time for the reality that God loves broken people to penetrate past my theology and into my heart.  It is time for the goodness that God has for others, be applied to myself as well. 

            Maybe the best way for me to prove the reality of God is to live as a broken person.  Others seeing my brokenness, faults, weakness can also observe God intervention in my life.  Observing how the God of all creation deals with me might reveal to them more of who His is, what He is like. I thought that my strength was what God needed.  Now I see that in my weakness, He is made strong.