Day 212 - Stuck

Thoughts that have come from various quotes taken from the book, "Victor - Breaking Free From a Victim Based Society" by John H. Hovis. Click here to link directly to the audio file.

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"Also, like holiness, those who don’t understand how righteousness comes about are doomed to rigorous and futile striving. At some point you are guaranteed to fail when you rely on your own efforts to stand righteous before God."

As quoted from the book "Victor - Breaking Free From a Victim-Based Society" by John H. Hovis Page 58.

I have a reoccurring dream. I don't remember many of my dreams but for some reason, this dream always stays with me. In my dream, I'm running from someone or something. As hard as I am trying to run, it feels like I'm swimming in molasses. My legs just won't move like I want them to. Though I try with all my might, I'm slowly being overtaken by what I'm trying to get away from.

This dream doesn't happen often. When it does, it always disturbed me. Even the fact that I have shared this dream now gives me a little bit of the creeps. I'm sure this dream has some deep seated, psychological meaning. I really don't care if it does or not. What I want is to be able to keep that feeling out of my waking life as much as possible.

In my dream, it is as though trying to get away from whatever is pursuing me is an exercise in futility. I feel helpless at making my very own movement happen. What a horrible and trapped feeling. That's the exact feeling we all should have when we look to this world and to our actions in this world for the kinds of fulfillment only God can give.

So many of use strive to bring traits like holiness and righteousness into our lives. Sure there are a lot of things we can do to help make these traits part of our lives. What we have to come into the fullness of is that it isn't completely up to us to make these traits part of who we are. It is through God's power in our lives that things like holiness and righteousness can ever be a part of the identity we want for this world.

Read with me today's Bible verse and let's see how it relates to that feeling of futility when we take on too much of what God is suppose to be doing in our lives.

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. 2 Corinthians 5:21 (NIV)

How much of a need for your effort do you see in becoming the righteous of God in today's reading? I don't see any of my effort at all. Maybe, at best, my effort is simply saying yes to the gift of God through Jesus Christ. Other than that, it looks to me that being righteous is more something God gives and less something I have to make happen in my life.

It is when we get stuck striving for things that God gives freely that we hamstring ourselves with victim thinking. This is so easy to do when it comes to holiness, righteousness, faith, love, relationship, and most importantly identity. We don't have to work ourselves to death to get these things. These things are part of who we are when we step into a relationship with God through His son. Working to get these things when they are already there is what makes us feel like we are swimming in molasses.

This doesn't mean that we play no part in the process. From today's reading, there are two words that, when we come across them in the Bible, we should pay particular attention. Those words are "so that..." In our reading today it says that Christ was given "so that in him..." Our job isn't to be striving to get righteousness or holiness or faith or love. Our job is to be "in Him". That's it. Relationship is what it is all about. God isn't looking for us to create these important traits in our lives. He wants us to walk with Him. In doing so, those traits come alive in ways we could never have made happen on our own.

Being "in Him" can sometimes be a challenging thing to do. It isn't because God is making relationship hard with Him. It is that our busy lives, filled with striving to get all we need to feel we are something of worth in this world, makes it difficult to see how to be "in Him." There are times when we just need to sit back, take a deep breath and just be. It isn't action that gets out of the molasses of life. It is when we recognize that what is overtaking us isn't evil but the love of God that we can sit back and let God's tidal wave of relationship wash over us in victor making ways.

All I can say is to do the best you can at recognizing when you feel stuck. Look at your life and see if there are things you are doing in your own efforts to try and make your identity be something that God already sees you as. Stop that kind of striving because it gets you no where. It is when you are able to see that where you are at this very moment is exactly where God is standing that you can begin to step into the journey with God. In doing so, your identity as God's Child has the power to make change in and around your life in ways that makes your victor status all it needs to be in your life.

Make today be all it can be. Stop striving and start living. Let the victor's life be what makes the journey God has laid out for you today be exactly what it needs to be for God's Kingdom to be built all around your life.