You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Sin’ category.
One of my favorite songs growing up was “Hard Habit to Break” by Chicago. I would stand at the edge of my driveway, awaiting the school bus, and belt out the first verse and chorus as if I thought I could really sing. The bus always came before I could get to the second verse, which I’m sure the neighbors fully appreciated. I did this everyday for a while. It became, ironically, a habit to sing that song each morning. I didn’t even notice I was doing it.
Fast forward several decades, and I’m still spending the majority of my time completely unaware of habits and the power they hold in my daily life. Completely disregarding the patterns that trap me daily and frustrate me as I try to walk more closely with God.
I recently discovered a book on this subject by Charles Duhigg, a reporter for the New York Times, called The Power of Habit. 
Duhigg quotes research from Duke University showing that more than 40 percent of the actions people perform each day were habits, not conscious decisions. He calls this alarming because we are thinking less when we’re in habit mode. “Our neurological activity literally decreases as the habit unfolds. That’s why the behavior feels so automatic, almost unconscious.”
The good news, according to Duhigg is that habits can be “ignored, changed or replaced.” And that understanding the structure of habits makes them easier to control. He lays out the structure of the habit loop: Cue. Response. Reward. Basically, there’s something that incites the habit into action. Then there’s our trained response to the stimulus. And finally, there’s the payoff. Whatever it is that we find rewarding about the behavior in question.
It’s interesting to break down the cycle in this way, because I typically go right to the behavior or habit itself and try to attack it head on. I don’t spend enough time understanding what the “reward” is for me, or just as importantly what provokes me, or triggers me to fall into the habit in the first place.
The second wrong turn I take when dealing with bad habits is that I try to remove them from the equation. I try to avoid them. Alter my course. I go the route of Clockwork Orange and try to torture them out of my being and rewire my brain to cause me physical pain at the mere thought of them. I have heard countless times from a variety of experts that it’s not enough to try and remove a negative.
Instead, you have to fill the space it occupies with a positive. You have to find something to replace it. This makes sense. The habit is somehow filling a void, providing some type of reward. Filling that need in a fruitful and appropriate way is the only path forward.
In the end, my natural tendency to jump straight to the response with no regard to the stimulus, and then self-administer aversion therapy to prevent actions from repeating themselves, typically gets me nowhere. But that’s yet another hard habit I’m trying to break.
I hate running. Turn me loose on a basketball court, baseball field or any other venue where there’s a ball and competition, and I’ll stay in perpetual motion for hours. Ask me to lace up my running shoes and take a jog, and I’m sucking wind by the time I pass my own mailbox. I hate running.
I may hate it so much because there’s nothing to distract me from the intense burning in my lungs and the pointlessness I feel when I’m running just to run. Or I may hate it so much because I’ve been doing it for so long. For 25 years, that was pretty much my thing. Run. Run. Run. Like Forest Gump, I just couldn’t stop. Running from mistakes I’ve made, bad things that have happened to me, wounds that I’ve endured. I’ve tried to outrun sin. Sprinting, trying to make stuff happen. I’ve just been running. Exerting effort. Trying to distance myself from the past. Trying to race toward some future I’ve created in my mind.
God asks us ALL THE TIME throughout the Bible to stop running. To “be still.”
Why does He repeat this so often? Because He knows we need the practice. If you have kids, ponder the following. Have you ever asked your child to be quiet and still when you’re…
- In church
- At karate class
- In a library
- Talking on the phone
- Sitting with a friend
- Driving in a car
- Stressed out
How many times have they listened the first time you asked? Or the second? Never? That’s what I thought. If you don’t have kids, just look around the next time you’re in a restaurant or another public place and laugh as parents try in vain to silence and contain their little bundles of joy. The harder they try, the more chaos ensues.
But running is pointless. Says so right in the Bible.
Isaiah 30:15-17 (with commentary and translation sprinkled in)
In returning and rest, you shall be saved; In quietness and confidence shall be your strength….
God has it covered. There’s no need to run. I just need to be still.
But you would not, and you said, “No we will flee on horses.”
Sorry, gotta run! It’s kinda my thing.
…those who pursue you shall be swift!
I can’t outrun my enemies, my wounds, my temptations. They are always just a step behind, pushing me. I will never get relief.
…you shall flee, till you are left as a pole on top of a mountain and as a banner on a hill.
I won’t know when to stop. After a while, they’ll just stop chasing me because they don’t have to any longer. My head will down, my iPod cranked up and I won’t even be looking over my shoulder. Just running as far and as fast as I can. Until I finally stop, and look around. Lost and alone in the middle of nowhere.
But then in verse 18, it provides a picture of how God will respond. Even after I say no, no, no, no and kick and scream and run around all hopped up like a crazed toddler who has had too much ice cream. It says: The Lord will wait that He may be gracious to you.
He’s right there waiting. When I finally stop running, and I realize I’m a banner on a lonely hill, so far away from where I was headed. He’s right there. Probably smirking. Hoping that I notice and fully appreciate the irony of how quiet and still it is.
I hate running.
“Christ comes to restore and release you, your soul, the true you.” – Wild at Heart
My wife texted me this quote yesterday. It wasn’t the first time in the past week that I had been approached with thoughts about restoration, release, of being who I really am. What a great quote, though. We are free in Christ to be the actual creature He created. To be our TRUE self. The problem is we usually don’t take advantage.
I’ve spent a great deal of time professionally counseling companies on how to create a brand for themselves or a product or service. How to message and portray the “essence” of what they are selling. How they want others to think and feel about it. It’s all about image. Perception is reality. We’re all consumers, so this idea of a “brand” is not a foreign concept. As you walk down the aisles of any store, you see the packages lined up with their own distinct messages and colors and designs and shapes. They each have their own presence and personality. They all are projecting an image that they hope will make you buy them.
I do that in my everyday life. And I bet I’m not alone. I create a brand to project to the world around me. It’s partly who I am, but in many ways it’s far different. There’s an entire persona that I have to work hard to keep in tact that speaks to success in my career, my personality, my moral compass, my family life, my talents. An image that requires daily maintenance, and at the same time smothers the real me. The true me. That doesn’t afford for me to be human and to be okay with my flaws and confident in my own skin. That doesn’t allow me to show the world how I’m broken and how God is working in me. The true me.
There are two major problems with creating a brand to represent my being. First, a brand is an attempt to express something you are striving to be. It takes liberties with reality, glosses over flaws. You can easily lose yourself, who you truly are, in trying to keep up with the brand that you are putting out on the shelf.
The second problem is that I don’t fully control my brand. One of the basic tenets of brand management is that a brand is ultimately shaped and defined by the people you share it with. In the end, your brand is not what YOU say it is. It’s what others perceive you to be. So, now, in addition to altering my true being to project a different image, I’m also being subjected to labels and expectations by the outside world. And quickly, I can become really confused and insecure about who I really am.
I guess there’s actually a third problem with a brand. It doesn’t take long for your consumers to figure out that you don’t have it all together anyway. I mean, how many times have you bought a product based on the “brand promise” only to be disappointed in its performance? Happens all the time with products, and with people. Just because you smile big and put on your “Sunday best” doesn’t mean everyone is buying it. There’s no way to live up to the image, to deliver on the promise, leaving me deflated and defeated.
I want to be the true me. I want to replace my brand with my being. I want to live a transparent life and to have God work through it. While it would be a difficult, scary and taxing thing to do, I can just imagine how liberating it would feel and how powerful it would be in fulfilling God’s plan for me.
So my prayer is that I’ll allow Christ to restore and release me, my soul, the true me.
At some point, you’ve likely heard a
smoker say the following: “I just quit smoking. Again.” You’ve probably watched a friend or family member lose a lot of weight, just to put it all back on again. Or how about this? How many times have you declared on January 1 that you are going to hit the gym regularly? How long did that last?
It’s really difficult to sustain healthy behaviors when it comes to taking care of our bodies. I find the same goes for spiritual health. Removing sin “for good” instead of just “for now” is incredibly challenging.
The reason is that we tackle both our physical and spiritual health the same way. We try to attack our vices or bad habits through sheer will power, determination, discipline and resistance. And then we pat ourselves on the back as we have success. Every day we dodge a cigarette or a cupcake. Every time we resist a temptation.
In my life, I’ve learned the hard way that this approach will only take me so far. If I’m not getting to the root of the problem, deeply understanding the motivation behind my actions and the things that trigger me, I just don’t have long-term success. My victories are short-lived and then I’m right back at square one. Defeated and ashamed.
The real problem with discipline and resistance as a way of combatting sin or cigs is that you are only dealing with the “action” and not the “attitude”.
1 Timothy 5:24 says, “The sin of your heart is the sin of your hands.” That’s a powerful verse. For me, it says that patting myself on the back just because I resisted sin is foolish. I can only contain my hands for so long. If my heart is not in the right place, my hands will find a way to escape the feeble chains I’m using to suppress them.
If I’m merely avoiding the act but desiring the action, then I’m still sinning. I’m still struggling. And it’s only a matter of time before that manifests itself in an unhealthy way.
This is a different thought process than I’ve had before. For years, I looked at sin as being external. Am I behaving or am I misbehaving? But sin is internal. The sinful act is just a visible expression of the sinful attitude. And sometimes it takes a while for it to show up. But as the passage above points out, sooner or later, it will be seen.
I’m not saying that fleeing sin isn’t a great first step. The Bible says to resist Satan and he will flee from you. But without closely evaluating and caring for your heart, you can’t run far enough away to truly escape.
Ask anyone who has been successful with a diet, exercise plan or quitting a habit like smoking, and they will likely have a story about how it required that they face and overcome internal obstacles. The same goes for spiritual health. Talk to anyone who has “quit” a sin for good and they will share how they transformed their heart instead of only training their hands to do no harm.
Every once in a while, God will prepare a theme week for me, where He keeps serving up the same insight until I finally take the hook and pay attention to it. That’s how thick-headed I can be. Sometimes God has to plan out an entire week, brand it and then smash me over the skull again and again until I get it.
This week’s theme: shame.
Yeah, a fun one.
First, there was a debate about shame in an email group that I’m a part of, with several people discussing whether it is an emotion or something else. I read through it quickly, and moved on. A few days later, I was thumbing through my Bible, trying to look up passages about confession and repentance, and the first one served up was Romans 10:11-13 which says “whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.” Again, I dumped the subject quickly, annoyed that the passage wasn’t what I was looking for. That’s an insight in itself. Me being more concerned about what I wanted to find, versus what God wanted to show me.
Finally, this morning, we were visiting a church, and the pastor spent the majority of his message talking about the power of the gospel. His central passage was Romans 1:16-17. First line of that passage? “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ.”
That’s when it hit me. I’m ashamed. Deep down I don’t believe what it said next in the 10th chapter of Romans, that the Lord “is rich to all who call upon Him.” That He will take care of me, provide for me, help me live and prosper. Nope, I must not believe it. Because I’ve come to realize that for the most part, I’m been acting like I’m ashamed of being in community with God.
Let me explain.
That’s why I have separate blogs and Twitter accounts. One for the “professional” me and one for the “personal” me where I explore my faith. I even hide behind a “handle” on the personal blog, which is of course the one you’re reading now. Sure, my close friends know it is me, but I’ve also been careful not to make that public knowledge.
I do that for the same reason I’ve suppressed spiritual discussions on my Facebook wall, or even in my interactions with anyone who is a part of my work environment. I’ve become so sensitive to how many people view Christians, and the stigma people place on bringing religion into the workplace or other public forums, that I’ve become worried about being branded a Bible beater and that somehow my career could be limited by the fact that I believe in Jesus.
And the only reason I care what other people might think is because deep down, I don’t fully trust that God will provide. I’m back trying to steer the wheel and navigate my own way. I’m back focusing on all the things that will expire at the expense of things that are eternal. That I would suppress my faith just to make sure it doesn’t damage my career, or even worse, my “image” is shameful in itself.
It’s one thing to be ashamed of my sin, which by the way is another ongoing battle. But it really troubles me that after all this time, I would find myself letting the world make me feel embarrassed or uncomfortable about who I am as a Christian. That I would feel the need to keep my relationship with God to myself. That’s the exact opposite of how I should be behaving.
Man, I wonder if this is how Peter felt when he denied knowing Jesus three times in one night. Now, I’ve not had anyone ask me if I believe in Jesus and then tell them no or anything. But the passive denial that I’ve been exhibiting lately is just as bad, and it’s happened much more than three times. And even more so, back in that day you had to worry about people driving nails through your hands and feet or stoning you to death. It’s silly, really. In today’s world, the worst possible things that can happen are emotional discomfort, a moment of social awkwardness or potential short-term economic loss.
I’m thankful for the insight. Even if it took God creating “Shame Week” for me to get it. I do think at the core, it’s not that I’m really ashamed of knowing God. It’s more of a conditioned response to the world I’m living in, coupled with some weakness in faith and an overly sensitive need for affirmation. Either way, it’s something to start paying attention to and working through.
It all reminds me of a great question posed by DC Talk in a song once.
What will people think when they hear that I’m a Jesus freak?
I think that lyric has been rattling around in my subconscious for a while. I need to get back to the place where I say that I don’t care, because there’s no disguising the truth.
There is a new book out by David Brooks, a New York Times op-ed columnist, that has spoken volumes to me. And I haven’t even read it yet!
The name of the book is The Social Animal, and I came across a review of it on my Twitter feed this week. I immediately downloaded it on my Kindle, well, after trying to buy it in a bookstore only to realize it was THREE times more expensive to buy it in there. No wonder Borders couldn’t make it. Sigh. But that’s not really the point of this post, so I’ll move on.
So far, I have only read the review, but I’ve read the review multiple times. Just in that snippet of copy, the author articulated much of what I’ve come to realize and grapple with lately.
The reviewer is a business executive named Tony Schwartz. He shared his insight on the book through a Harvard Business Review blog. According to Schwartz, this book eloquently explains why we’ve gone so far off course in our society, pinning it on “human failings we haven’t begun to recognize, much less acknowledge.”
He goes on to share Brooks’ core argument, “that the vast majority of us have very little understanding of why we make the choices we do, and that we’re influenced instead by peer pressure; impulsive and reactive emotions; a deep and bottomless need for admiration and status; overconfidence in the present; excessive worry about the future; the evolutionary instinct to avoid pain and move towards pleasure; and precious little capacity to delay gratification.”
This isn’t a spiritual book. But man, did he just sum up my struggle in one fast-moving, heavy-hitting paragraph.
The Social Animal explores our subconscious, which takes up most of our mental space, and it zeros in on the fact that “instead of drawing on our rational faculties to more deeply understand our interior impulses and motivations, we too often try to rationalize, justify, minimize and explain away the unconsciously driven actions we’ve already taken.”
In short, we have an infinite capacity for self-deception.
Schwartz reports that Brooks lays out a path to “a more meaningful life – one that balances action with introspection, confidence with restraint.”
As you can tell, I’m a big fan of his review. And I think I will be a big fan of this book as well. As I said to open this post, the book has already spoken deeply to me without turning a page.
I literally just woke up to the fact that my capacity for self-deception is indeed infinite. That I really need to get more in tune with my nature and how I’m wired. I just blogged about it a few weeks back. Brooks, and even Schwartz are saying it much more effectively than I could have hoped to say it, so I’m thankful to have stumbled upon their words. It helps crystallize what has been rolling around in my head.
I’ll report back after reading the book. I really hope it lives up to the lofty expectations I’m now placing on it. I’m hopeful that it will help my spiritual walk through better understanding of my physical being, plugging me in more directly with the mass of unconsciousness that secretly dictates success or failure in my life far too often.
We recently welcomed a new addition to our family of four. He’s a little cutie. A bit grumpy at times. Looks like potty training is completely out of the question, which is kind of a drag. His name is Cheeseball. And as far as lizards go, he’s pretty cool.
Cheeseball is a bearded dragon. My older son has been asking for a reptile of his own for quite some time. We finally relented once we realized it probably wasn’t a phase he was shaking anytime soon. It’s been fun watching Cheeseball (yes, my son named him) in his cage, trying to be a wild animal in a caged environment.
Since my wife doesn’t really get excited about the whole lizard thing, and the scales and crickets and clean up duty that come with it, I’ve been spending a lot of time with Cheesy. I’ve read an entire book on caring for beardies, researched on the Internet for proper handling, feeding and health techniques. I’m developing a great understanding of what makes these dragons tick, what their instincts are, why they act the way they do, what they really need to thrive.
All this has me thinking a little more deeply about myself, my needs, why I respond the way I do. Over the past year, I’ve become much more aware of my wounds and how those impact me. How I’ve responded to external stimulus in my environment. I’ve yet to pay as much attention to my natural instincts, those behaviors and reflexes and needs that just come built-in as part of the human package.
It’s important for Cheeseball to have a safe place to hide in his cage. It’s very distressing if he doesn’t have somewhere to retreat from danger. When you provoke Cheeseball, and he feels threatened, he will puff out his chin, open his mouth and hiss at you. Making himself appear larger and more dangerous than he really is. It’s important that he have access to light that provides warmth and vitamins. This includes a spot to bask in daily.
I could go on. There are lots of things I suddenly know about bearded dragons. But the point here is that I’ve been paying attention to all of these natural needs and/or responses in caring for our pet, while not taking any of these types of things into account as I think about myself, and specifically my spiritual walk.
We have an intelligent and intentional design. We are equipped with survival instincts and reflexes, as well as basic needs that we will strive to meet. And when our external environment goes as planned, a lot of these instincts and needs work just as the design intended. The problem is that we are constantly stressed by our environments, sometimes to the point of trying to be wild and free while caged and placed in an unnatural setting, either by our own actions or external forces beyond our control.
In a way, we are predictable as a result. No matter what our environment or circumstances throw at us, we respond based on our survival instincts. We pursue things in life based on the same set of needs.
The important thing for me to consider here is that I have a set of survival instincts that can both help and hurt as I try to pursue a deeper relationship with God. I have basic needs that I’m designed to pursue and meet at all costs. And understanding that wiring is every bit as important as it is to be self-aware of my spiritual wounds.
Being aware of my natural instincts and response biases can help me break patterns or at least better understand what I’m feeling and how I’m reacting to a specific situation. Being more cognizant of all my needs, and not just my spiritual needs, will help me be more successful in my faith walk.
This means that seemingly unrelated things such as the food I put in my body, the amount of exercise I’m getting, the social connections I’m making to family and friends and a host of other variables all contribute to whether I can be effectively present in my pursuit of God.
We are intelligently and intentionally designed, which requires us to be consciously and consistently aware of this design. Taking some time to look through the glass and understand how the wild animal within us is wired. Tapping in to our inner dragons.
We were standing in a big circle around the pitcher’s mound. Just a few moments after finishing a competitive, if not overly athletic, game of church-league softball. As is customary in church-league softball, we ended with a prayer. This particular evening, we were specifically praying for a young man who had been arrested on child pornography charges and who was sitting in a jail cell on suicide watch while we played a silly game of pitch and catch.
It was a somber end to the evening. My heart was broken for this guy. I didn’t know him. Still don’t know his entire story. But it was so devastating and sad. One of the members of the team we had just finished playing led the prayer. And the way he started it really struck me. He acknowledged that God is “chasing us in ways we don’t even realize.” I’ll stop right there. I didn’t hear anything else he had to say. I’m sure the rest of his prayer was really elegant and theologically sound. But that picture he painted of God chasing us, chasing me, completely flooded over me.
I often think of it this way. God is always there, ready for a relationship with us. But we tend to run away or wander off. Or refuse to move closer to Him. Whatever our misguided path happens to be. And while it is very comforting to think about God patiently waiting for us, not moving, but holding firm and still, it is even more comforting to imagine Him actively pursuing us. All the while we are wandering or running, He is chasing us from behind, yearning to be closer to us and to be in closer relationship with us.
I pictured this young man, who obviously took a horribly wrong turn in his life. Who knows what the history or background or context is. The reason behind his actions. Whether he is remorseful. What exactly he did. Whether he knows Jesus. What a beautiful picture to imagine God racing toward him, chasing him, even as he sits in that cell, on the verge of total collapse. Even then, God is God, and God is actively and genuinely in pursuit of his heart.
I am praying for this young man tonight. Even as I write this. And I am praising God for his relentless pursuit of us. Of course, I could make it easier and stop running already. But in the meantime, it feels really good to think that God doesn’t just wait on me, but chases after me. No matter how terribly I veer off course. Chasing me in ways I don’t even realize.
I was in church last week – small miracle – and was really amped up to be there. Only two songs in, I got really distracted. The worship team was belting out a song that went something like this: “You are so good, you are good, there is nothing good in me…”
Geez. Nothing good in me? No redeeming qualities whatsoever? Wow. Now, I’m motivated.
Luckily for me, the pastor delivered a sermon that seemed to contradict that lyric, bringing me back into focus. He started with a passage, Romans 7:17, which says, “But now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. For I know that in me (that is, my flesh) nothing good dwells…” Hmmm. The clarifying statement, “that is, my flesh” suggests to me that we aren’t necessarily void of goodness. Otherwise, why clarify? If you read further, it says talks about walking according to the spirit versus the flesh. The spirit, even though it is of God, is within us, battling it out with the flesh.
I personally think it is very dangerous to believe there is nothing good in us. I don’t care how many times I read the word wretched in the Bible, I don’t like it! I’m not being holier than thou with a remark like that. I’m not suggesting I don’t need God, that I don’t need salvation. I simply replace the word wretched with the word wrecked.
Yes, I’m a mess. But I am not void of goodness. I was made in God’s image, right? Once upon a time anyway. I’ve written about this before, but it is something I spend a lot of time pondering. In the spirit, we can do good, be good. Of course it is powered by God. But it is God opening something that exists inside us.
Otherwise, we would have no innate desire to follow Him, to be in relationship with Him, to yearn for Him. We are weak. For sure. We are wrecked. At least I am. But wretched? I just think that’s a strong and unnecessary word. Is my argument theologically based? I have no idea. After all, wretch is a fairly common descriptor throughout the Bible. This is simply my point of view.
Yes, I also fully appreciate that sin is deep within me. I just refuse to have it define me. I believe that God sees potential within me.
I was preparing to write this post several days ago. But my schedule got the best of me. The first day I started working on it, I had to drive to the airport for a business trip. On the way, I heard a song by Depeche Mode called Policy of Truth. It had been about a decade since I had heard it. There is a line in the song that says, “Never before is what you swore, the time before.”
Near the end of the song, that refrain is repeated about a thousand times. After multiple rounds I was like, ok ok ok ok. I get it. I have been walking according to the flesh. I’ve been falling back into old patterns, despite my rhetoric. Not really making a great case for there being good in me.
The passage in Romans said that sin dwells in us. That is an important description. Dwells. It’s not a weekend guest or an occassional visitor. It dwells. It lurks beneath the surface. It has taken hold. It occupies space. But it dwells “within us” which means it doesn’t define us. We have the ability to rise above it and to walk according to the spirit.
And we can’t do that without God, obviously. And without His mercy and grace, we would continue to be wrecked and really make a disaster out of our existence. But I will continue to protest the notion that nothing good can come of this. That we are wretched with no redeeming qualities. Right or wrong. For better or for worse. Good, bad or ugly. We could not be “redeemed” if there was nothing to “redeem.”
Earlier this week, I was frustrated and struggling. You may have noticed me heading to such a place in my recent posts. During a moment of quiet time, I specifically asked God to help me see why I was so stuck and why I was falling so fully back into my old routine, my old chains, my old idols. Over the course of 30 minutes, God spoke to me from Psalms and two “prophets” to help me make sense of things.
After my prayer for clarity, I opened my Bible. Randomly. And hit Psalms 132. In that passage, it says, “Surely I will not go into the chamber of my house, or go up to the comfort of my bed; I will not give sleep to my eyes or slumber to my eyelids until I find a place for the Lord. A dwelling place for the Mighty God…”
Insight #1: I’ve been cramping God’s style. I haven’t been making room for Him. Providing Him with space to work. That makes sense. I’ve talked before about how important it is to create space. I just haven’t been practicing the preaching.
I continued my pursuit, flipping back to passages in Jeremiah that I had read earlier in the week. In Jeremiah 4:14 it says, “…wash your heart from wickedness, that you may be saved. How long shall your evil thoughts lodge within you?” And then in verse 18, “This is your wickedness, because it is bitter, because it reaches to your heart.”
Insight #2: I need more elbow grease. Evidently, I still have some internal scrubbing to do. Sin digs deep. It sets in over time. You can’t stop scrubbing when things look clean on the surface. I am in a continual fight to take back my heart, as we all are. Yet another example of the need for patient endurance.
I finished up in Jeremiah, and then another prophet of sorts spoke to me. Jamie Oliver. My wife was in the background watching Food Revolution, tracking Jamie’s efforts to improve the health of Los Angeles by, as the title of the show suggests, revolutionizing their food. I was about to close my Bible when I heard Jamie shout out in his snippy yet endearing British accent, “You have to ask the question: Where does my food come from?” He was referring to the quality of the meat being used to make hamburgers. God used that simple phrase to give me one last truth to chew on.
Insight #3: I need to check my food supply. In addition to not making space for God, and failing to continually clean, I am also malnourished. I have been filling myself with junk food. Feeding on the same old lies. Curbing my hunger with things that temporarily satisfy but have no long-term value. It’s like eating bacon for breakfast, lunch and dinner (I could so do that by the way) and expecting to feel healthy and full of energy.
Ask and ye shall receive. God responded to me with a clear explanation of why I have been experiencing less than what He has for me. I’m not creating space. I’m not cleansing my heart. And in fact, I’m filling the space with additional junk, nourishing myself with things that will just further clog my spiritual arteries and further damage my heart.
I love that I’m in a place right now where I can troubleshoot with God. It’s so different from how I would have approached the situation in the past. Thanks to Jeremiah and Jamie for the words of wisdom. Now, if you will excuse me, I’m going to try and find something healthier than bacon for lunch.
the way to (t)here 
What You Said