Covering all sides

As anyone who knows me can say, I am a long-time admirer of C.S. Lewis and his writings. I find him to be incredibly insightful into the state of both the individual believer and non-believer, and of the church as a whole, even to the modern day. As they say, the more things change the more they stay the same, and reading a book like Mere Christianity can be very revealing when he speaks critically about the state of the church in his day, or how in his day as in ours people on all political sides were willing to take up the Word as a political club to get what they want but not at all willing to submit their lives to its Author.

Lewis was a prolific writer and me being a prolific reader, naturally I continue to take in as much of him and others as I can. When someone asks me "What stirs your affections for God?" I always respond with "reading the works of those who love Him and writing about how they impact my life." But all this introduces new opportunities into my life for the sin of pride, as I build my knowledge and read more and more, and spend more time writing about it.

But what's the answer? Not to run hard the other way, becoming someone who divests himself of the mind on the idea that "it's not spiritual," as though the Spirit can only be made manifest in overwrought emotions. As C.S. Lewis would say, that's an example of Satan getting us to argue about which of two equally wrong ideas are better (there I go again). Rather, there must be a central truth to govern it all, to put it all in place, and that's Christ. It's why Paul says in 2 Corinthians 10 that believers are at war, and as part of that war we "take every thought captive to obey Christ."

A place I have trouble with this is when I come to face down my sin of lust. It's hard to combat a deep sexual desire with knowledge--knowledge becomes this ethereal thing, hard to pin down, hard to make practical in that moment. I know a lot of things that I don't put into practice, but then, a philosophy that makes no impact on the life of the one who holds it isn't much of a philosophy. So clearly knowing a lot and reading lots of great writers is not enough. I have to submit all of my desires to Him, and do the hard work that will result in my greatest desire being for God. Only in that do I find myself a step closer to growing into a Godly man, rather than a boy held captive by his whims like a piece of paper blown about in a storm. Even then, though, I'm not the ultimate captain of my fate--rather, I am trading the destination-less tumble that is my life under my own command for the straight and steady course laid out by Christ, with its destination of true joy with God.

Or to go back to the war analogy, on my own I'm under fire in the battle field, no communication and no plan, with certain death looming. Submitting to Christ I am given strategy and tactics, I know which way I'm going, and death holds no fear for me, because no matter how today turns out He's still there. There's real joy, real pleasure to be had there, and I pray that when things get difficult God will make me just as mindful of this at that point as well.

My prayer tonight

Psalm 143

Hear my prayer, O LORD;
give ear to my pleas for mercy!
In your faithfulness answer me, in your righteousness!
Enter not into judgment with your servant,
for no one living is righteous before you.

For the enemy has pursued my soul;
he has crushed my life to the ground;
he has made me sit in darkness like those long dead.
Therefore my spirit faints within me;
my heart within me is appalled.

I remember the days of old;
I meditate on all that you have done;
I ponder the work of your hands.
I stretch out my hands to you;
my soul thirsts for you like a parched land.

Answer me quickly, O LORD!
My spirit fails!
Hide not your face from me,
lest I be like those who go down to the pit.
Let me hear in the morning of your steadfast love,
for in you I trust.
Make me know the way I should go,
for to you I lift up my soul.

Deliver me from my enemies, O LORD!
I have fled to you for refuge!
Teach me to do your will,
for you are my God!
Let your good Spirit lead me
on level ground!

For your name’s sake, O LORD, preserve my life!
In your righteousness bring my soul out of trouble!
And in your steadfast love you will cut off my enemies,
and you will destroy all the adversaries of my soul,
for I am your servant.

Monday: off to war

Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church...--Colossians 1:24

It's funny that this is the verse I ran into today after the last few days of dealing with proponents of the prosperity gospel. Paul is not submitting with annoyance to God in hard times--this man is rejoicing as he suffers. This is not normal for humanity. Who likes to suffer? I know I don't. But he had been so transformed by the power of the Gospel that he looked at suffering for Christ's sake as something to take joy in. Whether or not he was happy is debatable, but happiness and joy are not the same thing.

Paul has an eagerness to pursue Christ that I desire in myself. I have grown deeper in my affections for Him, but at the same time my desires and my faith are still immature. I know more than I did, I am stronger than I was, and all this comes from God and through His hand, not from anything I've done. Yet I consistently seek more of Him. In God I find real growing joy, even in the midst of pain; in God I find the only thing that inspires me to be excited that doesn't bore me eventually. I pray that I will have the courage to be a minister of the Gospel today to those I interact with, and for courage when the enemy's attacks come. Whatever may come, He is there and He's always moving and working in me, and for that I am more grateful than even I can express; He is life and whatever else comes, no one can strip that from me.

Upcoming performances

I wanted to post about stuff coming up that I'll be performing at. Specifically, I'll be playing with Quentin Moore at the DFW Neo-Soul Extravaganza. Quentin is a great musician who's recently released his first album of soul/R&B music that gets back to the roots of R&B, and I've enjoyed covering the bass parts on tuba for the last few months now. This will be a big show featuring a lot of different acts; check out the commercial for it here:




There will be free food and drink specials, and admission is only $10. The event will be held in David A's Club at the Sterling Hotel, 1055 Regal Row in Dallas; doors open at 8pm.

The dangers of pleasure; or, idolatrous gratitude

Some time ago I used this blog as an extended comment space to respond to someone I had engaged in debate on a YouTube video. As I am obviously taken with the capacity for long-windedness, 500 characters just doesn't cut it when I'm trying to make a point, and it certainly isn't sufficient when the subject is absolutely of crucial importance to the state of the human heart--mine, yours, and all of ours. The video in question for today is thus, a video of Mark Driscoll of Seattle's Mars Hill Church displaying a clip of Houston's famous pastor Joel Osteen of Lakewood Baptist Church. The clip Mark shows is a good summary of Osteen's general thesis of ministry:





I don't think I need to tear apart the specifics of what Osteen says any more than Mark does; he addresses the salient points. As always, however, any videos critical of Osteen often attract his supporters, who look upon those who would be critical of him as people who just want to "tear him down," as people who are simply jealous of his success (which is funny given that two of his most vocal critics, Driscoll and my own pastor Matt Chandler, run churches that each run thousands of people across multiple campuses every Sunday), or as simply not understanding that everybody has something different to offer the body. Often used as an example for this is the biblical principle that the body of Christ is just that--a body, with different parts that all require each other, and to be certain the call to exhort is an important one. The problem comes when you are exhorting people to be strong in something that is unscriptural. In particular I'll be responding to these comments from sapphiredewdrop:

he is only concentrating on a partial truth. every pastor(even us) have a certain gift or a "special" message. each one is a piece of the puzzle. also this pastor could present the truth without downing another pastor. Downing another does not show humbleness. and joel is pointing out the promises in the bible that has already been given to us.

and

The Bible...which is the Living Word of God does offer us health(instructions on healing). Healings are shown throughout the Old and New Test. Salvation is the center of our faith but there is still a world out there and a Satan who will try to steal,kill, and destroy. Sometimes when a person feels they must give up the words Olsteen shares from the Bible can be a great help. And the preacher is not telling Olsteen he is telling his congregation.

and finally

Also, Jesus was not born poor.
Many of his relationships were good, esp in the end when he rose.
I think this pastor is looking at things before the resurrection of Christ.
Because in the "end" Jesus was a victor. In fact in Col. 2 it says that he was triumphant over them by the cross.

First of all, I want to establish that this is not about Joel Osteen as a person, nor is it to say "He's not a believer because he says x." I don't know his heart, I don't know the essence of his relationship with God, but I do know what comes out of his mouth, and it is that which I will be addressing. Additionally, I pray that anything I say here that is contrary to what the Word lays down as truth would be called out as such or simply fall on deaf ears...or blind eyes, in this case. This is a serious matter of dealing with what is a major issue within the American church, and one on which I have felt personally convicted over past praying and ways of thinking--that is, looking to God as though He is my means of getting to x, rather than looking to God as the goal I am striving for, closeness and joy in Him above all other things.

My primary contention comes with what I argue is the central point of Osteen's entire speech in that clip, and indeed his ministry in general, laid out in this phrase that lies as the hinge of the entire segment:

You are not a sick person trying to get well, you are a well person fighting off sickness.

Not only is this statement incredibly dangerous to the life of a believer, it's 100% unscriptural. It is, in fact, the polar opposite of what God says our natures are. If we were still living in Genesis 2, then yes, he'd be right at least in that particular statement--but we aren't. We're in Genesis 3 (or, as Driscoll would say, in Acts 29), and we're living in a broken world, with broken sinful hearts. The Bible has a lot to say about the condition of the human heart, but it's best summed up in Jeremiah 17:9:

The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately sick;
who can understand it?

Right there Scripture undeniably opposes the idea that we are naturally well--on the contrary, we are naturally in a state of rebellion, opposed to God, opposed to what is righteous and He who is righteous. We are full of sin and live in sin, and it's only because of His grace that we are able to find any freedom. Man's wisdom is not sufficient and should not be trusted--this fact is serious enough that Proverbs says it twice:

There is a way that seems right to a man,
but its end is the way to death.--Proverbs 14:12

and

There is a way that seems right to a man,
but its end is the way to death.--Proverbs 16:25

Yet Osteen is not focused on the way to God; rather, it's what we can get from God that he is concerned with. Even the things that are good on their face--health, an end to depression and low self-esteem, an end to pain--are dangerous if they become our idols. It is, as Jonathan Edwards calls it, the "joy of the hypocrite." The hypocrite's joy is not based in closeness with God, but rather, in the idea that "God rejoices in me! God makes much of me!" which leads to "I must be a great person if God loves me so much!" This belief was just as alive and just as dangerous in Edwards' time as it is today.

Jesus has called those who would follow him to the realization that in order to be healed, they must first know that they are sick, not well.

After this he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth. And he said to him, "Follow me." And leaving everything, he rose and followed him.

And Levi made him a great feast in his house, and there was a large company of tax collectors and others reclining at table with them. And the Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples, saying, "Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?" And Jesus answered them, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance."--Luke 5:27-31

"After this," by the way, refers to three specific miraculous acts Jesus performs in the beginning of his ministry: He calls the first disciples after causing them to catch a huge amount of fish simply by casting their nets on the other side of the boat, He cleanses a leper, and He heals a paralytic. So clearly God does perform miraculous acts in the lives of those whom He calls. But these were in the course of bringing people to realize how much they needed Him, and of demonstrating His authority on Earth. Jesus could have healed all people on the planet with a single thought, yet He did not. And here in this passage we see that the only people who were able to experience the real joy that comes with closeness to Christ were those who were innately aware of their broken states; those who looked at themselves as being righteous because of their acts were able only to see a threat to their position.

Yes, God heals, God brings prosperity, God can make a man rich. He also can and will allow sickness and pain to enter a man's life, and He can take away everything you have. This is why it is crucial to understand the truth behind the phrase "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him." Not in His things, not in His promises, but in Him. This is a difficult concept to deal with, but the Bible is not known for being full of easy-to-digest concepts, nor is it known for being a book that endorses the general direction of mankind. In John 5 Jesus goes to a pool that once a year was stirred up, and whoever was first able to enter the pool was healed of whatever their problem was.

In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, "Do you want to be healed?" The sick man answered him, "Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me." Jesus said to him, "Get up, take up your bed, and walk." And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked.--John 5:3-9

Jesus healed one man, out of many. Why did He do this? Surely He could have healed all of them, it was certainly within His power. But He healed the man because it was what was in obedience to God's will:

So Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing. And greater works than these will he show him, so that you may marvel. For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will."--John 5:19-21

Jesus lived in express obedience to the will of His Father--and just as it was the will of God that the lame man should walk, it was also the will of God that the others who were there should not be healed. This is a side to God's hand in this world that is hard to understand, and impossible to appreciate if you look to God as Giver of Stuff, as a divine Santa Claus who takes away the nasty things and gives you good times. To extend Piper's famous phrase to its next logical conclusion based on the Word: God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him in the midst of loss.

While Osteen makes the wrath-absorbing reality of the cross of Christ almost incidental to "the world out there," the Bible makes it clear that this is in fact the true center of reality, and in ignoring this he misses the entire point. When Osteen says "Our original state is total freedom" he does his congregation a huge disservice in not only teaching contrary to the Bible, but in telling them that the normal way of life, without any call to seek God, to submit to Him, or to understand His Word, is goodness. Anyone with access to a television can tell you this is a lie, and surely those who tie themselves to the philosophy that God is naturally there to provide good times in this life will find nothing but disappointment.

So what does this mean--why pursue God? I mean, really now, if God's going to do what He's going to do, what do we get out of it? This is not some sort of Kantian "good is good because it's good" argument. On the contrary, there absolutely is reward, but it is not for earthly reward that we do this:

"Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."--Matthew 6:19-21

But what are we laying up in heaven? Some sort of eternal vault filled with bars of gold? Jesus brings up the matter of the heart, and we already know that the human heart is naturally a broken, sinful thing that seeks itself above all other things, but we also know that the heart is healed through God's work in us, over a lifetime of sanctification as God brings us to deeper and deeper realization of who He is and what His love truly means for us. What God is doing in us over our lives as the power of the Gospel transforms us, is showing us the true order of created things as He intended it to be--and it has nothing to do with being rich, or poor, or sick, or well. Those people who were closest to Jesus when He was on Earth died very horribly for His name and so that they might be examples for how much more valuable Christ is than anything else on Earth.

Mark 10:45 says:

"For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."

Not "The Son of Man came not to be poor but to give us freedom from poverty." Not "The Son of Man came not to be sick but to give us freedom from sickness." Not "The Son of Man came not to die but to give us freedom from physical death." Quite the opposite, in fact--in pursuing Christ the biggest realization and the most truly freeing one--true freedom, not this "freedom from lack of stuff" business--is laid out in Psalm 118:6

The LORD is on my side; I will not fear. What can man do to me?

Not "Man will be unable to hurt me because God's on my side" but rather "Let man hurt me. Let him kill me. I have God, and he can't take that away." Or as Paul put it succinctly in Phillipians 1:21:

For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

And as Jesus says in Matthew 16:25:

"For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it."

Over and over and over again, the Bible calls us to realize that its entire point, its purpose for existing, is to point us to God. What God brings into our lives is incidental and temporary, whether pain or pleasure, loneliness or closeness with another, wealth or poverty. Joel Osteen turns God into the means to get what we want to get. The Bible calls that idolatry, and calls us to repent of it; the Scriptures call us to the true joy that is closeness with Christ and freedom from our obsession with the temporal things of this world. I only pray that I take this as seriously in my heart in difficult times as I do in good times.

I invite sapphiredewdrop and anyone else to respond and point out where I've gone wrong, but at the same time I challenge you to base your critique in the Word, not in a personal problem with the way Mark Driscoll preaches or any other personal dislike. There's nothing wrong with saying "I don't think that he is a pastor that would bring me into a closer relationship with God," but if you can't refer to the Bible to defend Osteen without proof-texting or if you just can't refer to the Word to defend him, you might want to put a critical eye to yourself and where you are in relation to what the Bible actually says. I will not attack you or call you names, but I will a heresy a heresy. Beware what you believe, because it's your eternal soul at stake, and we should take Paul's charge in Phillipians 2:12 to "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling" very seriously.

Sign o' the times

I don't really know who reads this blog, which on one hand is a little disturbing since I have little doubt there's a lot of "I know that guy, and he was a jerk to me, so how can he be talking about Jesus on here?!" stuff going down--but on the other hand, it's also a part of me holding myself accountable. People who knew me in past years, however, are probably surprised that I don't spend much, if any time addressing politics and current events. Not so long ago I was something of a political junky; I was relatively active in campus politics, even serving a term on SGA at my undergrad school and taking part in College Republicans both there and at UNT, I listened to a lot of talk radio and spent a lot of time blogging on political matters. But this blog, relatively new compared to my previous efforts, contains little to no political content, and I'm in something of a mood to address why that is.

I became somewhat burned out in terms of dealing with political issues I would say some time between the 2004 and 2006 elections. My side had ostensibly won, but I was unhappy with the direction I saw the country and my party going. Fired up going into the elections, conservatives had become apathetic and the party leadership was more concerned with establishing some sort of permanent majority with (R) behind it than being actual leaders--putting the cart before the horse, so to speak. I was also struggling to understand why I should care about particular matters that to some seemed crucial. Why should I care if some school or courtroom posts the 10 Commandments, or if a particular state legalizes gay marriage? Not to say that I didn't or don't have opinions on those, but they didn't strike me as things that required major cultural battles. In short, I had come into the knowledge that political views of any kind, no matter how logical or right they might be, had nothing to do with achieving any sort of real joy or fulfillment in life.

When God pulled me back in that day in November of 2007, when He grabbed me by the proverbial collar through Matt Chandler's voice and said "You are going to go here, and you are going to bury yourself in Me among these people," God revealed that of course those things were unfulfilling--they could never be. If I clung to earthly matters as though they were crucial and eternal, as though I was the one in real control instead of God, all I would succeed in doing would have been to frustrate myself. I don't have my old blog up anymore, but I do recall posting things to that effect, that I didn't see how things could end up in a good place. The world is certainly becoming a darker place, as wars, famines, diseases, political oppression, enemies foreign and domestic, and quite simply the pure wickedness of man grow with each passing day. I was brought up listening to those who preached optimism, but I had forgotten that it is not in man that such optimism should be placed.

"And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet."--Matthew 24:5-7

"Aslan is on the move!"--Mr. Beaver, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Placing my hope in man simply confirmed what I knew about the Bible and God--that is, that this world is sinful, and that it will get much, much worse before it gets better. But even as things grow dark God continues His great work, breaking down doors to faith in places once thought inaccessible to Christianity, not through war and cultural suppression but through love and mercy, and the faithful work of those whose own hearts were changed by the Gospel. By trying my hardest to battle purely on man's field I put myself in an indefensible position--man, as is his nature, will naturally seek out the easiest way, the least opposition. Even when man chooses the harder way, he only does it so that he may come out the other side able to boast, and that rarely ends well.

I still consider myself a conservative. I am deeply troubled with the idea that the President wants to transform huge chunks of the economy into subsets of the federal government. Anyone with the ability to observe can simply look at other countries who do the same to know that it cannot succeed. Raising taxes has never worked and it will not, no matter how you justify it. I will stand up in a moment and say that I oppose his plans. But I will submit every word to the Word, remembering that even the leaders I see as ultimately destructive are established by God--not that I cannot vote against or oppose them, but that I recognize my losses in elections are for His reasons and the greater good of all things. That raises a lot of new and hard questions, but if I trust God, it means I have to trust Him even in those moments where it seems like everything is going wrong.

I will also oppose those on any side who attempt to use the Bible as a weapon to support a particular political agenda. C.S. Lewis spoke against this in Mere Christianity; as soon as you make the Bible a means to your end, rather than living your life for God and seeking Him as the center of all things, you go very, very wrong.

This doesn't mean I will never express political viewpoints, but it does mean that I'm not here to rant. The truth of the Gospel is first, and everything else, especially myself, is secondary.

Joy in the midst of battle

I've been going to the men's Bible study at church Tuesday mornings, which means much earlier mornings on Tuesday, but it's been very good. We're doing a study from John Piper's Desiring God network, called God Is The Gospel. Part of it is watching Piper speak on the subject at hand on video, and in the days leading up to the day we come together we spend time individually with workbooks answering questions on particular aspects, which helps prepare us more for what he's going to speak on. This Tuesday he was speaking about prayer, about its role in the life of a believer and what it is and is not supposed to be. It's a hot subject to be sure, whether you profess to be a Christian or not.

One point he made is that scripturally, prayer is the equivalent of a radio in the battlefield--we are, as the Bible mentions frequently, at war with an enemy that is not flesh and blood but is spiritual, and one that has an advantage in that we were born on the enemy's side and therefore have a natural bent towards going that way. In prayer we are constantly deferring to our Commander for instructions, for truth, for the way through especially in those times when otherwise our natures would lead us astray. The problem (especially in American Christianity where we've been conditioned to believe that the war we're involved in is over some sort of external morality rather than over our own hearts) is that as he put it, we've turned prayer into a "domestic intercom." We're not submitting our lives to God and seeking His direction in prayer, we're calling the bellboy to bring us some room service because things are a little uncomfortable. One thought that struck me, and that I thought would be good to dive into here from both the Word and from his writings would be: "How can you preach 'Christian hedonism' and then turn around and say that our lives are war? How can we be enjoying God when we're fighting?"

These aren't mutually exclusive concepts. On the contrary: what we are fighting for, is joy itself, and I'm not just saying that because it's the subtitle of the Piper book I'm reading right now, "When I Don't Desire God." As Ephesians 6:12 says, I'm not fighting against external physical enemies, even though it would seem that there are many--but no, those who are indifferent or even hostile to Christianity are those who I'm called to love and carry the gospel to, not fight as though it's me or them. My battle is "against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." It is also, as Paul says in Romans, against myself:

Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

Cognitively, I know that the joy I experience in closeness with God is far, far better than anything else. The moments I have tasted that joy have resulted in real growth and transformation as I have desired in prayer for a long time now. Yet a big part of me is still tied deeply to earthly things--whether they are explicitly sinful, as in lustful desires or pride as I wrote about yesterday, or just things I have used to kill time over the years. Even now as I write this it's hard to not want to stop in the middle of it to check Facebook, or go eat something, or just randomly wander around the web, let alone the temptation to venture into the darker parts of the Internet.

The thing is, though, even if I become this perfectly disciplined church boy who loves nothing more than putting on my finest clothes and singing hymns in church, is that the solution? Certainly not--for one thing, a church service is not the wholeness of life in God. Besides, I don't wear suits to church (though maybe I will one of these days...just to mix it up). Likewise, if I did nothing but sit around absorbing theological texts and memorizing Scripture, would that mean I was leading the life God intended? Again, not at all (though in their own ways those things do stir my affections for God, but they are also areas that I must always submit to Him because they can also become prideful things for me: "Oh, look at me, I'm so smart reading these big books and whatever the current cool author is among people at the Village." I want to be reading them because God's leading me to do so, not to make myself look churchy.)

So: what the hell am I supposed to do? If even the good things in my life can be twisted, and in fact I am fighting tooth and nail every day so that I may experience the joy of God's presence in my life in spite of the fact that my heart still desires what is wrong, what am I supposed to do about it? How can I fix that?

I can't.

The more I wrestle with it, the more I'm forced to the conclusion that all I can do is what I'm doing, but continually, every day: going to God in prayer, asking Him to heal my sinful heart; seeking Him in the Word; I have to be watchful for what enters my mind that it doesn't lead me to selfish and sinful lines of thinking, and of what I allow myself to ponder, whether it's an image that will drive me to lust or an incident that will result in me being anything other than the servant of those around me. All these things I must do through difficulty, because they don't come naturally. I am also thankful that I don't have to do them alone. God has put me in a house with two other men who are likewise pursuing joy through battle, and in a church full of the same. God has brought us together for encouragement even when the enemy strikes--even when we are the enemy.

The hope of all

Now what was the sort of "hole" man had got himself into? He had tried to set up on his own, to behave as if he belonged to himself. In other words, fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must law down his arms. Laying down your arms, surrendering, saying you are sorry, realising that you have been on the wrong track and getting ready to start life over again from the ground floor--that is the only way out of our "hold." This process of surrender--this movement full speed astern--is what Christians call repentance. Now repentance is no fun at all. It is something much harder than merely eating humble pie. It means unlearning all the self-conceit and self-will that we have been training ourselves into for thousands of years. It means killing part of yourself, undergoing a kind of death. In fact, it needs a good man to repent. And here comes the catch. Only a bad person needs to repent: only a good person can repent perfectly. The worse you are the more you need it and the less you can do it. The only person who could do it perfectly would be a perfect person--and he would not need it.--C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, ch 4: The Perfect Penitent

For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God's truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy.--Romans 15:8,9

"Repent" is a word that pretty much everyone even only peripherally aware of Christianity, at least in the West, is aware of--often, because you hear some crazy guy on the street corner shouting it while wearing a sandwich board sign opining that the end of the world is nigh. But it's a key word, perhaps the key word to a believer, as it is the beginning of forgiveness and the birth of hope and faith in our lives. Through repentance we come to love--to experience God's great love for us, to comprehend that this love is completely unwarranted yet offered in spite of ourselves, and through that, to loving God as He calls us to, with every ounce of our being. From that we become men and women who love those around us, even those we don't know, and those who have wronged us.

Repenting is something I've had trouble with since I was a kid, and it certainly hasn't gotten easier as I've gotten older. You have the things you do in life, good and bad (at least by the typical cultural definitions) and over time you start to look at those things as a part of you. The problem is, those things for me stopped being supports in my life--they became anchors, dead weight holding me down, frustrating me, inspiring me to spend lots of time looking backwards at my youth and glory days, and worrying about the future and what it would bring. But the idea of letting go of anything seemed contrary to what I should do to survive. What were those things? Well, there were a lot of different ones, and God is still revealing things to me, but a few big ones: my participation and achievement in the world of drum corps, my continuing education and my career in general, and the big one: my independence and self-absorbtion--or in a simpler term, my pride.

Since I was a kid I've been very independent. I am the stereotypical "first child" (which is good, since that's what I am), charging out headfirst after whatever it was I was pursuing. But it became something I made more than it was supposed to be, and in the end I used it to make much of myself, and little of God. So over the course of several years, God slowly pulled my supports/anchors away from me. My participation as a staff member with a couple different junior corps, which to me was supposed to lead to a fruitful career running a hornline, led instead only to frustration, and I have not felt God move my heart to similar participation since then. I was forced to leave school in a combination of academic and financial failure, leaving me worried about the long-term consequences for my career; my only performing work was coming as a member of a band with a history of turmoil and headed for more--and at that time God began to convict me of exactly how sinful I was. I was somebody who had been brought up with a foundation of Christianity, who understood it cognitively and believed it, but my heart had not been substantively transformed by the Gospel. I was still living in sin.

The biggest realizing in the course of repenting for me has been that you're not simply repenting of a list of actions (though for most it starts there). What I am repenting of is the state of my heart. My heart lives in dire opposition to God, to submission of any kind let alone to Him. It is, as Jeremiah 17:9 says, "deceitful...and desperately sick." And there is nothing of my own strength that I can do about it; even if I manage to be "good" in the sense that I don't do what is culturally or even biblically considered bad, that accomplishes nothing. The law brings only conviction, after all; it does not bring commendation to those who manage not to break it, and in all likelihood doing so would simply make me a self-righteous hypocrite, just as selfish with what God gave me as I would be if I was buried in some other sin.

Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it.--Luke 17:33

Jesus lived, and died, as a man who had surrendered his whole being to God. Of course, he was able to do this because he was God, and therefore was aware in full of the joy that comes with being in His presence. But that is what makes God's mercy a twofold act of righteousness: 1) God is merciful on us because He allowed His Son to absorb His wrath for our sins, and 2) He gave us a model for what it truly means to submit and live for Him. There is so much more to it that I seek to understand, but I do praise Him for my salvation, and for bringing me to a place of submission, to where I could understand that loving my own life above Him was only a guarantee that I would die completely, but in surrendering it to Him I would find real life as Jesus demonstrated in His resurrection. I crave more, I need more, but at the same time I am satisfied that He will show me in due time. I take joy in that longing, in that desire for God if you will, because it is the only desire that leads to the true fullness of joy, rather than ultimate disappointment and frustration.