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Since I am the Way, staying close to Me is staying on course. – Jesus Calling, August 3
Remember the days when you were a kid that making an adult “promise” seemed like some magical binding contract to force them to do what was promised. Now, of course, we know there is no “power to the promise.” Or is there?
Why do we keep some promises with gritted teeth, yet toss others away like yesterday’s garbage? Why are some promises so central to who we are and others are so disconnected or cumbersome that we drop them off and forget about them?
I’ve been asking myself these questions lately because I want to understand what made some promises more significant to me than others. There were promises I made myself when I was young that defined me as a person. Then there are the unmemorable promises that I can’t count or really remember. However, there are also those promises that I can’t seem to keep no matter what I do. How or what can be learned about promises broken from promises kept?
WARNING: This writing contains issues of a deeply personal nature. It is not for those who never want to hear the negative and always want things upbeat. This is a real and honest reflection.
When I think back to those significant promises, there are a few examples that come to mind:
– I promised myself as a young Christian that I would always try to hold on to my faith, and would press hard into it when challenged by circumstances.
– I promised myself I would never drink or do drugs to the point of losing my ability to be mindful of my actions. Since I’m being honest, I must say that I’ve let myself get tipsy a handful of times in my life, but not drunk. I’ve never done drugs. Now, I choose not to be given to either one.
– I promised myself I would be a virgin when I married, and I was.
Yes, I was a virgin when I married, but it took a miracle of God and tenacity on my part to be sure that happened. Let me briefly explain. Don’t worry, no gory details, just some hard truths.
I was sexually abused as a child. For that matter, I was abused every other way as a child. However, the sexual abuse is most significant to this topic. Please hear this: Sexual abuse does not equal a child losing their virginity! Abuse of this kind takes many things from you, but virginity is a love gift you give only once in a loving act. Sexual abuse, especially the kind that leads to rape, is not an act of love nor is it ever freely given. It is enticed, threatened, groomed, seduced, mortified, etc. from the abused child. Its significance here is in the damage abuse does (which I will write more about in the future). Abuse of any kind creates a “wormhole” of neediness in a person. Like a wormhole in space, anything that comes close to meeting that person’s neediness is sucked in like rain on land in a drought. This “wormhole” of the heart craves love and affection. Thus the set up:
Here’s a young child who loves God and becomes a Christian in the middle of some of her most harsh abuse. Let’s see how she manages raging hormones with the addition of a love and affection wormhole in her heart. Can she keep anything to give to a husband when her needs could seemingly be met so quickly in a moment of passion?
Fortunately, and I guess this is one of the keys, I had made the first promise above. No matter how hard it got, I would press into my faith in order to find hope, strength, and answers. While I recognize this is an interpretive issue, from my own study it is clear that the Bible calls for celibacy outside of marriage. Since that was His standard, I knew it needed to be mine as well. Second key, I committed myself to God’s standard for me and held it as sacred. This was not a negotiable thing. I knew I wouldn’t go to hell for it, but I also sensed that there would be a loss of some kind if I didn’t follow this standard. I didn’t want to miss a reward.
Key three, I suppose would be that throughout my dating years, I made my passions a matter of pray. Because I didn’t grow up in church, I never knew that sense of “God shouldn’t know about some things.” I prayed very frankly with God about all my feelings, fears, and desires. In each relationship, God gave me great grace in this area. Did I always take God’s grace? No! Remember, I had the wormhole for love and affection and I tasted from counterfeits and the real thing from time to time. However, I always confessed those moments to God because they missed His standard and I knew God was watching all the time.
I suppose, key four, was that I had prayer support and encouragement from others. Many adults that I considered role models encouraged me and prayed over me regarding staying close to the Lord and not being distracted by other things. When God called me to ministry, my commitment went deeper and I continued to get prayer support and encouragement from peers and older adults.
In the moment, when push came to shove so to speak, I had to depend on the previous keys to make the right decision. Like I said, I wasn’t perfect, but with each fall I learned new ways to run away or push back. Sometimes a shove was necessary.
Another key was learning to forgive myself when I failed. My life tendency has been to wallow in guilt until I felt my penance was paid. Guilt that leads to wallowing or self-abuse is not productive and leads to places like depression. I realize that the Bible doesn’t talk much about “forgiving yourself” specifically, but that is because “receiving grace” implies the realization that you couldn’t do better and even if you could, your best would never be enough. Grace is the undeserved gift that can’t be opened until you realize there is nothing left to do but open it.
Lastly, I suppose that I had to recommit myself each time I failed to remind myself of my goal. I really wanted to be a virgin when I married. It wasn’t just an “obedience to God thing;” it was what my heart desired. There are always areas in our hearts that call to us, where we want to change. We want to make that “magical promise.” However, we are sometimes left with something standing in the way. We may want to meet a certain goal, but we are unwilling to live without that “dear payoff” we get when we give into ourselves. The payoff looks something like this – when we act the opposite of our promise and feel for even a moment a sense of peace and bliss. I have to be honest and say that making out felt so close to the love that I longed for it. Yet something told me inside my heart that the wait would be worth it and it was. We must believe that putting off the temporary fix leads to a permanent pleasure down the road. It always does because that is just how God operates.
Well, no real promise comes without paying a price, which is why Jesus challenged us to “count the cost” of discipleship before we commit. There is a promise I want to make. There are probably promises you want to make too. Where are you in this process? Where am I? I’m almost ready to make that magical binding contract!
I had an epiphany this afternoon. I really do have free choice. That may not seem like much of an epiphany, but there is so much more to free will than just choosing this or that. In fact, I am persuaded that free will, which ironically cost us everything when we chose to disobey God, is now the cross upon which we must die. In other words, the choices I make each day determine whether I’m building up the “new life in Christ” or simply continuing to build up the old life that keeps me dragged down and depressed.
As a Christian, God has asked me to do two things daily: Love Him and Love my neighbor. So when I wake up in the morning, significant choices I make either moves me toward God’s goal for me or those choices move me away from God’s goal and cause me to stray from the path God has set before me (Pro. 3:5,6). So how do we know which decisions are substantive or not? Substantive decisions are the ones that affect our character or God’s goals for us. For instance, what you eat for breakfast may not be a substantive choice for one person, but for me it is a substantive choice because I struggle with managing food intake and my weight. Greeting people with a smile is not a substantive choice for me, but for someone who struggles to socialize with others, it’s a substantive choice. These substantive choices, over time, add up to habits, and habits add up to a person’s character. (Ro. 5:1-5.) Therefore, it becomes important that I look at my life, my choices, down to the smallest choice to determine which choices bare the weight of being substantive.
So, how do substantive choices become a matter of eternal life or death and decay? Certainly, each substantive choice holds within it the potential to move you in a positive or negative direction. Just like in the Garden of Eden, choosing to eat a piece of fruit became one of the most substantive choices a man and a woman could ever make! For 21st century Christians, each substantive choice we make has the potential to move us from point A in life to point B or worst case, to point A-!
Substantive choice becomes the cross on which we choose to die daily to sin or not by way of forcing us to choose for our betterment or our demise. Again, as someone who struggles with weight, continually choosing to eat an unhealthy, imbalanced meal will move me closer and closer to an unhealthy life and may rush my demise. However, choosing to eat a well-balanced, healthy meal serves as a stepping stone, moving me closer and closer to God’s goal for me, a healthy life so that I can serve Him.
Every day, as I am given the choice to choose for God or not, I am given the opportunity to take up my cross (Substantive Choices) and choose the better path rather than the path of immediate gratification or selfishness. God created us with the ability to choose so that we would choose Him!
For me, my epiphany is that I really do have a choice in things. I don’t have to “go with the flow” or give in to my urges. I am empowered by God to choose. Lord, help me to choose well today and every day.
Welcome to my brain of paper, or, er, device screens! From time to time you’ll find me, Marla Rogers, a born and bred Arkansan, sharing honestly my thoughts, feelings, random peculiar meanderings, candy cane wishes and… well, you get the picture.
Will you like this blog? Unequivocally, I say yes. If you like stories with great dramatic twists, well-formed, interesting characters, and a killer plot — that’s my life. If it were a novel, the promo might read like this:
Survival — Marla’s watch word. She had survived so much as a child: the mysterious death of her father at 41, the drama that followed as her family imploded and she became lost in the rubble, and the secrets she has hidden from everyone for forty years. Now that Marla’s an adult and married to the man of her dreams, will she survive all that life throws at her as an adult like she survived the fallout of her father’s death or will she perish amidst the scattered rubble of memories of her broken childhood?
Okay so my pitch achieves a modicum of overwrought emotions. There was nothing mysterious about my father’s death. He died of a heart attack. My family did implode which I plan to share some about here. Rubble, oh I’ve got rubble, right here in River City…. Seriously, I’m still finding and cleaning rubble which I plan to talk about here. I am married to the man of my dreams, and I’m sure I’ll be talking about him! Life has thrown a lot at me as an adult which will no doubt be part of what I talk about here (chronic migraines, infertility, anger, frustration, joy, etc.). Secrets, you say. Not many, but if it’s there and worth writing about, you’ll find it here. Will I survive? Well, we will find out together.
You will also find things here about cats, dieting, religion, recipes, tips for living, Christianity, self-discovery, writing, poetry, heartwarming stories, and honest reflection.
If this is up your alley, join me. I promise a ride worth talking about.
Mrs. Rogers Neighborhood Blog 