Crooked deep down

Ok, Bonsai.

I'm a really big sinner. And I forget. Especially being in full-time ministry (whatever that means). But the reality is, I am really, radically, awfully sinful.

Let me define terms real quick: to sin is to miss the mark. To aim for something and to miss it. In my case, if the target were the broadside of a barn, to (accidentally) shoot the cow.

How do I miss the mark, you ask? Yes, I know you: you want the juicy details.

Well for starters, even my honesty is crooked. I share all this in hopes that in the sharing I'll be forgiven my shortcomings.

But what led me to write this at this moment is that I decided to do a fast yesterday. I decided I was fed up with my inability to make decisions. (The problem, you see, is that it's never just about the decision itself, nor even about honoring God. It's about money. It's about finding a wife. It's about nice clothes and leather shoes. What in the world am I doing in ministry!) So I decided that I wanted to hear from God about these things I'm facing, and the way in which I was going to hear from him was in fasting and in prayer. So off I went.

But I messed up. I don't demand things of God, and I don't, by my right actions, cause him to act. But it was with that attitude that I started a week-long fast, and with that attitude that I made it about 24 hours and fell flat on my face and ate some peanut-butter toast.

Yes, yes, yes. You laugh. I did, too, to be honest. But that assessment - that I messed up - doesn't address the real issue. I didn't just mess up. I messed up because I AM messed up. Even in fasting, my motivations were (are) all wrong.

No, no, no, you say. You're too down on yourself! Self-esteem is the answer!

Well, it hasn't worked for me. In fact, self-esteem has been perhaps the most dangerous path of all. Why? Because God has given me so much. I have much to self-esteem about. I'm a decent musician, a decent writer, I'm emotionally intelligent (when I manage to get outside myself), I know a good amount about the Bible, I can think deeply about things and grasp complicated concepts with relative ease. For what? How does any of this help me? I'll tell you what self-esteeming about all that does: it destroys me when I encounter musicians who are better than I am. It destroys me when I think about how I'm only decent, how much better I could have been by now with a little discipline, which I can never seem to muster.

Ever waiting for the moment when there won't be that inner sense of dread about being found out. When I'll finally reach that next level of holiness in which I might actually feel capable of helping someone toward freedom.

No. Self-esteem and all the motives for which I could have it is just a heaping pile of poop. The only freedom I know doesn't come from what I'm able to do nor what I've been able to accomplish. It comes from recognizing my devastating insufficiency and saying to God that HE is my sufficiency. For real. And this act, this turning over of my insufficient sufficiency, is made possible only by the recognition and acceptance of my faults. (So many good words for failure.)

That's why self-esteem doesn't work. Because of reality. You know it and I know it. Something's not right, and it doesn't become right because we tell ourselves it actually is right.

And it doesn't end at self-acceptance, either. (Thank God. That would be depressing.)

It ends with GOD making it right. Oh, how he loves to restore the broken-hearted! And then he changes our desires so that we want good things! Honestly, if I back up for a second, I am, in fact, far more disciplined than I was a few years ago, and that hasn't come from me. How could it have, if my own efforts continue to fall flat on their faces at every turn and bump (or hunger pang).

Bad behavior is a symptom and correcting it is a bandaid without disinfectant. The real issue is that we are all crooked, deep down, and unimaginably needy.