My weakness

 About four years ago I began meeting with my pastor and mentor once a week for a sort of counseling appointment, I was in a rough spot in life and desperately needed someone to take me under their wing and lead me in the way that I should go, my pastor did that for me.  He invited me into a relationship with him and invested his time and talents into my life without expecting anything from me in return.

There are a number of things he taught me that I still hold to today but the most important of all  was the necessity of staying rooted in the Word of God.  He showed me how to stay focused on the Bible and to keep a journal everyday where I wrote out what I'd been reading that day and what God had been showing me.  Over the years I've done just that, keeping journals from the last 4 + years talking about what I'd been studying and what God was telling me through His scriptures.  At times I have used these journals to write about issues in my life along with what I'd been studying and how they coincided.

Today I finished a journal and went to my bookshelf to place it next to my other filled journals and to retrieve a blank journal to fill once more with my thoughts on God's word.

While I was getting my new journal I decided to go back through my old journals from the years to see what I'd written about 4 fours ago on the same day.  Let me just say how humbling of an experience that was for me.  It's amazing to go back over four years on the same day in each, having read the same passage of scripture, and to see how different my writings have been on the same verses.  However, that's not the point of this story and I'm sorry I just took 300 words to introduce what I am going to tell you about.

See, some time ago I was in a little bit of a different place than I am right now and I was starting a new relationship.  On September 7th of that year I wrote about the sin of the Israelites in the O.T. and I wondered if I was just as weak as they were.  I'd been involved with past girlfriends and I wondered as I began a new relationship if I'd have strength this time around.  I wondered "is my relationship with Jesus strong enough to keep me, is my relationship real or is this all fake?  WIll I just fall down the same path I've been down before?"  Let me tell you that things didn't go well for me after that, depending on how you look at it, and I did go down the same path I'd gone down in the past.

What's so different these two years later?  Now I know I am not strong enough, I know that I am weak and I know that realistically if the same opportunity presented itself tomorrow I might take it.  I understand how horrible that may sound considering I work for a church and I am going to school for theology but it's the truth.

I have been praying over the last week or so that I would be made more weak, or is it weaker?  I understand that no matter how hard I try, no matter how much effort I put into it, no matter how much I wonder if I will or will not fall, the fact remains that I will inevitably fall.  I understand some people might think that's wrong of me to say but it is the truth.  There will come a day when the love I have for my Savior will be overshadowed by the alluring gaze from another.  Let me be clear, the alluring gaze from another could be vulgarity, it could be gambling, it could be gossiping, it could be offense, it could be trusting myself and not trusting Him, my point is not to focus on one area of sin but to understand that sin is running around knocking on my door as God said in Genesis, the question is will I open that door.  When my Savior tells me, "Anthony, don't open the door, look to me instead."  WIll I look to Him or will I open the door and invite the sin back inside?

I have been praying for weakness because I am tired of looking in the mirror and seeing myself.  I am tired of opening my mouth and hearing my voice and my words.  I am tired of looking back over the years and saying "I brought myself here."  My hearts desire is that I would become so weak and so humble that all you would see when you look at me is Christ, all you would heard when I speak would be Jesus, and years from now I would look at where I am and say, "God brought me here."

Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12:9 "But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."  Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weakness, so that Christ's power may rest on me."

My sincere prayer is that I would die, that I would wake up every morning and die to self so that i could come to life in the light of His glory and His love and His strength.