"A key secret of those who have finished well is that they focus more on loving Jesus than avoiding sin." - Ken Boa, Conformed to His Image

This little sentence, unobtrusive in the middle of a paragraph at the epilogue of Boa's book, stuck in my mind. But as I began to look back over the last couple months, I believe that it is astoundingly true, and the profundity goes beyond the confines of the statement.

Several months ago, I was confronted starkly by my own darkness. My selfishness, my pride, my stubbornness, and the results of them all which came out in secretive yet clear sin were laid out in front of me, and I was suddenly horrified. I spent a few hours crying in my apartment, begging God over and over again to forgive me and release me from the terrible guilt and sourness that was gnawing at me. I began trying to make amends for the lies and other sins that were so damaging to other people around me, even those they didn't even know about.

The funny thing is, I had hardly thought about selfishness or pride before that sudden moment. I knew I had some issues with pride, but I usually brushed them off. Selfishness was not generally an issue I considered as I have a fairly simplistic lifestyle and thought that showed well enough that I wasn't selfish. Yet these two fundamental wrongs of pride and self-centeredness were there, strong, living and growing in me.

I did not call these out. I did not bring them to my own attention. It was something that the Spirit did in me and for me.

Earlier, I was reading various things that impressed in me the desperate need and astounding power of prayer, and I began to dedicate myself to prayer more and more, to spending time with God in prayer for myself and for others. It was that time in the presence of God that I think triggered the exposing of these beasts within me. It was not me that brought them out, and there was no one else around me when it happened; it could only have been the Spirit.

There is a transformational power in the presence of God. R. A. Torrey spoke well when he said, "Each day of true prayer finds me liker to my glorious Lord." (Torrey, How to Pray)

I often find myself among people who say that to live a more Christlike life, we must strive harder and harder to live as Christ does and to do right. After all, Paul exhorts the churches over and over again to put to death the deeds of the flesh. But when I sit and consider this, I wonder if this is possible. Essentially, this would require one of two things - either someone else must accomplish the task, or our flesh must essentially commit suicide. But that is far from the nature of the flesh, far from the designs of the sinful nature to kill itself and let itself be replaced by another. That is selflessness, and the flesh has nothing to do with that.

Many here will point out Galatians 2:20, "For I am crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me, and the life I now live, I live by faith in the one who loved me and gave himself up for me." I counter with the entire chapter of Romans 7, particularly verses 21-23, "So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members." We are prisoners of the law of sin. Paul was; he admitted it quite bluntly. Can we be any different? But there is a solution, and Paul gives it in the next two verses in this chapter, "Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God - through Jesus Christ our Lord!" We are rescued not by our strivings, but by the hand of God, by the work of Christ in our lives.

Now I'm not ready to give up on my own struggles to put to death my sin, for I think that abuses the old phrase, "Let go and let God." Yet I must continue with that struggle with two thoughts in mind. First, as Martin Luther offered in his hymn, A Mighty Fortress is Our God, "our striving would be losing". All my efforts to change myself are naught. If I place my hope there, I am accomplishing little but idolatry. Richard Foster points to this in Celebration of Discipline, explaining that I accomplish worship, not of God, but of my own will. Second, my striving must be accompanied by the transforming power of God.

What, then, is the task? If I will fail repeatedly, how do I do what we are urged to do? How can I "be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect"? I must place myself in his presence repeatedly, continually, and without reservation. If there is transformational power in the presence of God, then my task is to place myself in that presence. My task is to find every way possible to be with him at every point in my life, at every moment. And not just moment by moment as I walk through life, but also in definite spaces of time, devoting myself to his presence and his voice without distraction or other concern.

Richard Foster offers that this is what the spiritual disciplines are about in many ways. These disciplines do not make us holy. They place us in the presence of that which can make us holy.

Why are prayer and Bible study so vital to the life of the Christian? Because they are the most definitive ways to be within God's presence, and if we are not in God's presence, we will never change, we will never be different, we will never be the Christians that God has called us to be.

There is transforming power in the presence of God.
Seek, then, that presence as if your life depended on it.
It does.

- Matthew R Green
04/20/02