Posts
There is actually only one thing you can dedicate to God, and that is your right to yourself.
- Oswald Chambers
- Oswald Chambers
This is a hard thing.
We tend to cling tight to self, even after coming to the faith. Giving up our right to ourselves means not only using our gifts even especially when no one sees and holding up our weaknesses to the light, but it also means surrendering the hopes that go unfulfilled, the yearnings that lie unsettled beneath the surface.
Giving up our right to ourselves is not something we do to win accolades, to impress others with the lofty heights we've reached and the sanctified air we're breathing.
Why, yes, thank you, I have worked hard to attain humility.
No.
It's invisible.
It's internal.
It's a take-up-your-cross-daily-and-follow-Me sort of task we've been set.
Part of giving up your right to yourself, I think, is giving up your right to being spiritually extraordinary. Don't take that the wrong way. Self becomes an exponentially more insidious foe in matters of the spirit, in matters of faith. Part of giving up self might mean becoming okay with the fact that God might plant you in a small garden out the back door of a little house that few people ever visit. And that doesn't mean that you cannot live full, cannot live in a way that God smiles upon. Perhaps part of making God smile is stretching down roots in secret places, shining a little light in hidden spaces, touching one soul at a time when everyone else's backs are turned.
Perhaps the important part is growing in that garden rather than wilting in self-abasement.
Shining though the light be faint and only one other pair of eyes sees through the darkness you're dispelling.
Thanking God that He's helping make humility easier to come by.
This post makes me think, because the whole concept of doing things NOT to be seen by other people is one that I'm horrendously bad at. I need to constantly remind myself and be reminded of the things you wrote here. Not being centered around self doesn't come naturally. The self-centeredness of my desires, and desire for the accolades of men, is something that has been brought out and exposed to me in the last months and years... and it's funny how in one moment I can feel like I desperately need/want spiritual blessings of peace and fellowship with God, and in the next moment I am chasing after vain things that my fleshly nature craves. Maybe God allows me to feel the anguish of the former in order to turn me away from the folly of the latter.
ReplyDeleteI like the word-pictures you have created (sorry - analogies? metaphor?) "planted in a small garden out the back door of a little house that few people ever visit" (Have I ever thought of myself that way? No, unless with resentment that it was so)
"....stretching down roots in secret places, shining a little light in hidden spaces, touching one soul at a time when everyone else's backs are turned" You're right, that is much more valuable than if the whole world looked at you (me) in adoration. I feel like that IS you, Debbie, except I bet God has used you to touch more souls than you feel like you have. I hope you won't always feel the loneliness of being a (seemingly) unnoticed flower in a little unnoticed garden bed, but in the meantime, you remind me by your words and your life of what God has called us to.
"Shining though the light be faint" It seems like a faint light, doesn't it, in these "jars of clay"?
"Self becomes an exponentially more insidious foe in matters of the spirit, in matters of faith." Yeah, I wrestle with that. It seems like a crushing conundrum sometimes... we each can only be ourselves, this body and mind and spirit that God has given each of us; so feeble and inexpressibly needy; self-centered by nature, and how to be otherwise? How to delight in God and desire His glory, in the place of such neediness? (I don't really know the words to express the struggle... I can't seem to even find the words when I pray, so I don't expect I'd be able to do much better with you.)
Thank you for your response, Cadie. I write about these things because I struggle with them, too (not just struggled in the past, but still struggle). I so appreciate your honesty, and I truly understand many of those feelings. It's so much easier to gain affirmation from others than to seek to rely wholly on our Abba Father for rest in our feebleness, joy in our brokenness, and love in our unloveliness. I don't know that these warring desires--the hunger for human affection and approval and the yearning to deeply know God and live with Him as our fulcrum--will ever entirely vanish. I think the best thing to do is to own the struggle, give it to God as many times as we need to, and press on. Viewing self is difficult, because ultimately, faith isn't about self. It's about God. Self-praise is obviously wrong, but self-absorption, excessive self-critique, endless self-analysis--all of these are equally wrong but are immensely more culturally acceptable. This dovetails a lot with Rundy's comment, too. One day, when we're one with the Father as Christ is one with the Father--somehow in that mystery made manifest our sinful views of self will dissipate. That's what I'm looking forward to.
DeleteJust to be clear, the struggle I was describing wasn't of self-critique or flogging myself for my shortcomings. The struggle or conundrum I was referencing was, basically, my desire for what I feel I need or want versus truly desiring God's glory. I know we ought to desire God's glory. I may not have really been replying to where your thoughts were going, but I just took it off in the direction of where my thoughts (or rather, emotions) have been.
DeleteI think I did get that sense of what you just explained from your original comment. And I understand that. Perhaps it was me who wasn't being clear. :) I think the crux of the whole issue is whether we orient our lives around self (glorifying, abasing, or simply fixating, perhaps on our own level of fulfillment) or around God.
DeleteAs we touched on elsewhere in conversation, the difficulty on the other hand is being unwilling to speak about ourselves, our lives, and experiences because we don't want to be preoccupied with self. This was a struggle for me with the issue of writing about my experience. Isn't writing about that experience, and deliberately going out and sharing that, looking for praise from men rather than God?
ReplyDeleteIs the lesson that we should all bury what we have experienced and share it with no one, lest in sharing we de-facto become self-absorbed?
To me there seemed a certain irrefutable logic to this. But I have come to realize that the preoccupation with not sharing ourselves is ever so much as self-centred as being preoccupied with sharing oneself. Both modes revolve around having one's gaze focused on the self. How insidious that some things we call "self-abasement" are in truth self-preoccupation.
By contrast, if we are focused on Jesus then we will share what is going on in our lives (or not) as the Spirit moves and works in us. We are not guided by some law of actions, but by the wind of the Spirit as it touches us, moves us. The sharing, or not sharing, in this situation flows not from a preoccupation with the self but a preoccupation with God and the words and deeds that He is calling forth from us.
So perhaps an improvement on the Oswald Chambers quote would be that the only thing we can dedicate to God are the things He has given us for that purpose--whether it be words, deeds, or simply the very breath in our lungs.
You hint at the very thing I just said with your own words of "Perhaps the important part is growing in that garden rather than wilting in self-abasement" but I thought to bring it out more....
DeleteYou ask good questions, Rundy. I think it goes back to what you've said before about self being a conduit of God's grace to others. That's your aim with your book, and I think that's the proper view we should take in living day by day. I agree--the preoccupation with NOT sharing ourselves is just as self-centered. Either way, our focus is inward, and we're snared by living a life of gazing inward rather than at God. I've pondered this many times, and have drawn the same conclusions as you.
DeleteI like your statement about being moved by the Spirit in our sharing rather than some law of actions. That whole paragraph rings true. Self is not evil; it merely tends toward sin when it is separated from its Creator. When the two are in tandem, I think we have nothing to fear. Self is swallowed up in the greater glory, and in that swallowing up it can be used.
Thanks for the response.