Unsearchable

I am so desperately wretched. I often look at myself in the mirror, ever so intently, as if I'm staring down an enemy. Curious to me is the fact that, horrid as I am, there is something undeniably good within me. I look into my own tired eyes, squinting, trying to look past their brown dullness and see the light that shines within. I know it's in there somewhere...

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Being a Christian is a state of existence that is unlike any other. When you accept Christ into your heart, the Holy Spirit of the Living God takes residence within you. Can you even conceptualize that? The God of this universe, the Creator of all things, lives within you. When you become a Christian, you have an eternal power residing deep within you, magnifying the spiritual you that He created!

The only problem is that you're still the physical you. You're trapped in this disastrous container, wired with arteries and veins and nerve endings--little sensors that fire an innumerable amount of times throughout the day, sending electric signals to your brain. This is that "flesh" we often talk about in Church. Some may scoff at the notion that your flesh makes decisions for you, choices that are contrary to the Spirit living within you. Considering such an intricate system of feelers, electric signals, and biological wires, how can you deny this fact? This bag of bones that carries the real us around is an instinctual, primordial sort of beast. It has an insatiable appetite...it cares only for its continuation, for its self-interest, for its survival and promotion. Sometimes I feel as though my flesh would want to see to it that the light within me is smothered, or even snuffed out. I know that might sound crazy, but it's almost like my flesh knows that it can't get what it wants as long as this light is shining so brightly within. And there's a catalyst for my flesh's desires--the one we call the enemy.

I thank God for the antecedent to this, His Spirit. I picture Him working His way through us in these very times, working almost as an antibody (wow, I just got that pun), fighting our flesh's evil desires, dulling and deflecting the sharp arrows aimed at us by our adversary, strengthening us and restoring us.

And so the battle rages on...

I get in these moods sometimes. I get down on myself for my sinfulness, and I want to run away. I sit around, racking my brain. Where would I run to? That's the only problem, no matter where I go, my flesh follows me. I try to run toward God, but every step I take, my flesh is right there with me, challenging me, testing me, trying to destroy the real me.

But hallelujah, His Spirit is also walking in lockstep with me as well. It's exactly at that moment that God steps in--and there's nowhere that He can't find me. A friend texted me today out of nowhere. She said she had been praying for me this morning out of Jeremiah 33:2-3. And it reads:

2 “This is what the Lord says, he who made the earth, the Lord who formed it and established it—the Lord is his name: 3 ‘Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.’"

Some things in life are inexplicable, incomprehensible, and unsearchable. That's something I have to accept. Those called to ministry sometimes have to go through hell in order to build God's Kingdom here on earth. But hallelujah through and through, God's Spirit never departs from us. Though it might seem like it at times, we are never alone. He'll never leave us alone with our flesh. His Son died for us,  His very Spirit dwells within us, and Father Himself is never more than just a call away...

Photo by Rhys Logan