Slandering God

The message in My Utmost this morning was again timed perfectly to address the issues of my heart right now. I have been under pressure to worry, to forget who I am inside, to give in to fear and panic as the date for the Bat-Barakah rushes in and almost nothing is getting done or even planned yet. Those around me are starting to doubt my sincerity about this and, as I suspected from the start a couple weeks ago, the devil is arranging all sorts of external, “important” distractions to keep me occupied. I delivered the THIRD transmission to the shop to get my daughter's car fixed while my other vehicles have serious problems of their own, my multiple jobs are creating pressure to stay busy paying attention to them, other very consuming interests are asserting themselves to my mind and the cat punctured my air mattress the other day so that I lost a lot of sleep slowly sinking to the floor all night until I had to get up at 4 AM to replace it with another. This is only to provide a glimpse of where I am inside right now for context. Yes, there is a lot of pressure to worry and stress about all these competing priorities, but this is nothing new and is experienced by everyone. It is my choices and reactions during all of this that determines the direction and outcome and whether I mature more or regress into the dark tombs of fear and depression. I believe this may be the fight referred to by Paul and the “fight of faith”. I would like to remind myself of some key phrases that God presented to me this morning as reinforcement for His plans to protect and guide my heart today. They are all from today's selection in My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers that I quote from so often. “It is possible for us to misjudge our capacity.... We must not measure our spiritual capacity by education or by intellect; our capacity in spiritual things is measured by the promises of God. If we get less than God wants us to have, before long we will slander Him....” First of all, this reminded me of the “joy capacity” that Dr. Wilder teaches about. Joy capacity is a very real function of our brain and is increased physically by experiences of joy, of people being glad to be together. It is also the very same part of the brain that handles stress and trauma. It is like a flexible bucket in our brain designed for multiple functions. If it is not big enough for the trauma we experience, then our mind will resort to all sorts of other tricks to cope with the experience and hide it away until our “joy bucket” grows to enough capacity to be used to process it effectively. What I find intriguing here is tying our capacity to the immense resources of the promises of God. Failing to establish this connection between our inner life and the external resource of God's powerful promises will always result in anger and slander toward God, holding Him responsible and blaming Him for all our problems. We will end up saying, “'You expect more than You give me power to do; You demand too much of me, I cannot stand true to You where I am placed.' When it is a question of God's Almighty Spirit, never say 'I can't.' Never let the limitation of natural ability come in. If we have received the Holy Spirit, God expects the work of the Holy Spirit to be manifested in us.” That is very strong medicine, but I need it right now. I believe that I am being led by the Spirit even though I am very wobbly at many times. God has promised to do His “thing” in me and I hold Him to His promise. I also firmly believe He has arranged and prompted us to plan and go through with this important event in the lives of our daughter's and I want to stay in cooperation with His leading. Most importantly I want to keep my own spirit in line with His Spirit during the process. The next section touches on something I have been thinking about off and on for several days. I have made the observation to a few friends that it seems to me like anger is always directly related to a perception of unfairness, whether actual or not. Unfairness is linked directly to justice and if followed through fully will always end up back at anger toward God for His perceived injustice toward us. While many people do not express it that way, if it were revealed I believe that is what would be found inside their heart. This next paragraph reinforced that idea and really flushed it out more clearly. “The servant (Matt. 25 parable) justified himself in everything he did and condemned his lord on every point – 'Your demand is out of all proportion to what you give.' Have we been slandering God by daring to worry when He has said; 'Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you?' Worrying means exactly what this servant implied – 'I haven't had a decent chance,' and the one who is lazy spiritually is captious with God. Lazy people always strike out on an independent line.” This is a very important principle for me to remember. Worry equals slander! So the reality of it is that every time I am tempted to worry I am really being tempted to slander God, His attitude toward me and His ability to take care of me. I certainly do not want to find myself in a position of slandering God, but I also have to admit that I really am in that position far too often. Making it clear in this way helps me to see the real issues at stake and reminds me of what is really going on. It removes one more layer of deception that the enemy has had over me most of my life. One more point I would like to share that I have also been discussing with my friends related to this. I have observed that self-justifying is never a part of God's way of living. Not only does God ask us not to justify ourselves, He also never justifies Himself. I know that sounds like heresy, but if we think about it carefully I think we will find it to be true. That is why all through the Bible God talks about us as being His witnesses. God is conducting His part in the Great War between good and evil in such a way so that ultimately He will be justified by His creatures without resorting to defending Himself. That is one of the underlying principles of existence that has been twisted and distorted by sin. Our selfish hearts naturally tend to justify ourselves at every opportunity and therefore we assume that God operates the same way. But if we consider carefully God's ways I believe we will discover that true justification always has to come from another. The real catch in this is that when we resort to self-justifying and defending ourselves, which comes oh so naturally and spontaneously, we actually are precluding God being able to justify us by His grace. That is why the only way we can stand justified before God is by confession and repentance which are the exact opposite of defensiveness and self-justification. That is the irony of the gospel; the only way one can obtain justification is to resist justifying one's self. Self-justification is resistance toward God and His offer of redemption. And as I am learning more and more, resistance in the presence of power results in heat, pain and ultimately death. “But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ His Son.”