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Exchanged Glory II: The OK Stronghold
I wanted to move past my unreliable heart to a reality I could depend on, even if I had to fight the misleading train tracks in my emotions to do so.
As a young man I tried to walk in truth, but I struggled. I couldn’t believe that God would require me to deny the kinds of feelings I had. Doing so seemed so far from what a loving God would ask of one of His children that His word confused me. I sometimes just curled up in my bed, bewildered and depressed at the seeming impossibility of it all.
Through the years, a series of battles had helped me to see reality more clearly. When I listened to my feelings I tended to get hurt, but when the truth won out I was surprised by freedom. Each skirmish brought a growing desire to get beyond my emotions and to press into real life.
When I learned about my Adult, I knew I had found a major tool for doing so. It allowed me to more quickly analyze God’s word and my situation. I could identify compromise, doubt, and double-mindedness and replace them with faith and conviction. I was able to recognize the deceptive pull of authenticity and to stand on good knowledge. I became passionate about learning how to live. I set my heart to pay whatever price was necessary to gain wisdom.
I knew that it was possible for me to believe the lie that I was OK when in reality I was not.
Knowing the correct password — saying “Master, Master,” for instance — isn't going to get you anywhere with me. What is required is serious obedience — doing what my Father wills. I can see it now — at the Final Judgment thousands strutting up to me and saying, “Master, we preached the Message, we bashed the demons, our God-sponsored projects had everyone talking.” And do you know what I am going to say? “You missed the boat. All you did was use me to make yourselves important. You don't impress me one bit. You're out of here.”
(Matthew 7:21-23, The Message)
I also knew that it was possible for me to feel that I was “not OK” when I really was.
My dear children, let's not just talk about love; let's practice real love. This is the only way we'll know we're living truly, living in God's reality. It's also the way to shut down debilitating self-criticism, even when there is something to it. For God is greater than our worried hearts and knows more about us than we do ourselves.
(1 John 3:18-20, The Message)
I wanted to move past my unreliable heart to a reality I could depend on, even if I had to fight the misleading train tracks in my emotions to do so. I put in place the first OK Buster: “I will judge by the truth rather than by my feelings.”
Allow me to give an example of judging by truth rather than by feelings: When I faced many years’ worth of abnormal sexual temptations, my emotions told me that giving in to them was the only honest path for my life. To deny them was to live a lie. The Bible, however, told me the truth. It said that to follow my heart into sin was to fall to deception and pain, but to obey God was to set a path toward freedom and joy.
I had to decide whether I was going to live based on my feelings or the truth. I chose the truth, and I expected God to quickly transform my inner life to match that commitment. When years went by, however, and the transformation didn’t happen as I expected, my emotions were tempted to conclude that His promises must be false. After all, I had done what I should and it hadn’t worked.
I again chose to believe God’s word over my feelings. But when more years then went by and the expected changes still didn’t show, I was faced with another possibility: Perhaps my continued struggles showed I was too wicked to receive God’s help. Maybe, in spite of my best efforts, I was so much of a rebel that I was subconsciously rejecting His promise. This possibility pushed its way into my consciousness with demonic force, forcing yet another conflict between the truth and my feelings. Should I judge my progress based on faith in His word or the way my emotions were reacting?
I did my best to stand on His word, and that was a good decision, but I made mistakes along the way. Rather than working through my emotions, I squashed them and tried to force myself to feel what I thought Jesus wanted me to feel. This worked in some ways for a number of years, but it eventually backfired. My emotions went underground and resurfaced in ways that mystified me. Obedience seemed to produce bondage and pain rather than freedom and joy.
All of this provided more reasons to doubt God. He was supposed to change me on the inside. The fruit of His Spirit was “love, joy, peace ...” (Galatians 5:22-23). Why was I headed in the opposite direction? Had I believed a lie? Or maybe I was just beyond saving. Was I was so messed up that even God couldn’t help me?
Once again, I was at the altar of decision between the truth and my feelings. Was I going to believe the evidence of my experience or the evidence of God’s word? What did God’s word tell me?
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?
The truth was that God was for me. This was the case even if all of the “evidence” before me told me otherwise. It was true even if I had sought God for years without seeing the expected results. It couldn’t be changed, even if an army of demons, the enticements of the world, and my own heart screamed at me in disagreement.
God was working to give me all things that He had promised. This included the character traits that my heart seemed unable to receive. He would give me the ability to gradually overcome every pocket of sin in my heart. He would work in me the grace to be able to live with love, peace, and joy. And He was going to freely give these things to me. It wasn’t based on anything I could earn. It was mine because He loved me.
To be honest, my emotions didn’t feel as if I was getting something for free. Giving up sins that had become deeply woven into the fabric of my being felt like an expensive price, perhaps too expensive given my lack of success. Yet I had to face the truth that I only perceived it as expensive. In reality, I was giving up something that was less than worthless to gain something that was more than priceless. Compared to God’s gifts, my desire to sin was nothing more than a call to emptiness and poverty.
In all these struggles, I worked to side with the Word of God when it contradicted my feelings. He was freely giving me all things with Jesus. He was for me, so who could be against me? My Adult chose to look at the clear evidence in the Bible that stood against the confusing evidence in my feelings, and it concluded that nothing and no one could stop Him from doing what He said he would. I just had to humble myself and follow Him as best I could while He made this truth more of a reality in my life.
The logic of Romans 8:31-32 even covered the fact that parts of my own heart were against me. My desires and personality had undermined me for decades, yet the scriptures told me to trust that God was greater than my desires and personality. No matter what my weaknesses were, He would save me from the infection of sin that tended to turn me from Him.
He knew from eternity that changing me wasn’t going to be easy. He said in His word that my flesh (my humanity) was dead set against obeying Him. Romans 1-3 made this abundantly clear:
There is none righteous, no, not one; there is none who understands; there is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside; they have together become unprofitable; there is none who does good, no, not one.
The Bible told me who I was apart from Him. My carnal mind (my mind without the influence of the Holy Spirit) was unable to submit to Him and His law.
Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be.
Fortunately, the word of God also told me that Jesus was the answer to my total inability to follow Him. He had come to live inside of me with eternal life and power. Romans 5:8-10 summed this up with stunning eloquence:
But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.
If God could reconcile me to Himself while I was His enemy, a rebel who was running in the opposite direction, how much more could He save me now that He lived in me? My pitiful human weakness was no match for His strength.
This was true even when it looked like my weakness would never bow to Him …even when the parts of my heart that continued to want to rebel frightened me. They seemed as if they might dismantle my faith and destroy my family. Accusing demonic voices joined with them and told me that my continuing struggles showed that I was hopeless. The truth, however, told me that I would be saved by His life. His Spirit within me would keep my faith intact and bring me into the “all things” promised in Romans 8:32. My future didn’t depend on my ability to live for Jesus; it depended on His ability to live in me.
I choose to judge by this truth rather than by my feelings. Doing so kept me moving in the right direction. It kept from being dragged under by the driving demonic “not OK" messages that came against me. It didn’t end them, but it lessened their power enough for me to make progress in the battle into His best.
There were thousands of details to work through and decades’ worth of humbling myself left to do. Still, by His grace, His word became alive and active in me (Hebrews 4:12). It resonated with a profound yet simple truth: God is for me. Who can be against me? How shall He not with Him also freely give me all things?
Putting this into practice was scarier than I expected. My Parent and Child panicked, complaining that it was the end of my existence as an individual. I felt like I was becoming a computerized mechanical robot, following a script rather than being human. I feared I was toying with psychological forces that we dare not touch – that I would eventually crack from the strain.
My Adult helped me to push past these concerns. It allowed me to step out further into the risky territory of trusting God to teach me how to live based on His word. The Lord helped me to interrupt the unhealthy games my emotions had been playing. I responded to “you will be OK if” and “you’re not OK” messages with answers from the Bible rather than with responses like “I’ll prove myself,” “Just you wait and see,” or “I’m out of here.”
When fear tried to turn me back from following Jesus, I reminded myself that a feeling of safety wasn’t my goal; knowing and obeying Jesus was. When frustrations arose, I reminded myself that my outward success or failure wasn’t as important as growing in Christ’s character. My job was to do what God wanted. He would allow accomplishments to follow when He saw fit.
I devoted a great deal of time to being trained in God’s word and wisdom. I wanted to see the world as He saw it and to be a person He could use in it. My mind had been crippled and warped by false ideas. Its walls had been broken down by my uncontrolled spirit (Proverbs 25:28). I sought to work with Jesus as He rebuilt them.
I didn’t do especially well at first (and in some ways, I still don’t). The standards of the Bible were far above what I could practically live, and this made me uncomfortable. Handling my sins would have been easy if I had been instantly (or even quickly) transformed, but it didn’t happen like that.
I needed a way to find “OKness” in the middle of the struggle, a way to stand secure while I was in the process of change. I already knew the answer: the blood of Christ.
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