Always Carrying About in the Body the Dying of Jesus

After over 20 years of being a Christian, I am learning much lately about the grace of God and its place in my life. For so long I have been living with the idea of my effort, my sufficiency, my solutions. In the past few months I've been realizing the value of admitting my inadequacy, my stupidity, my hard-heartedness.

I am a control freak. I like to have a plan, and I like to ensure that it is carried out. I like things to go the way I anticipate them to go; I like expectations to be met. I don't deal well with disappointment--that means something didn't go the way I had planned for it to go. My way was best--why shouldn't it go that way?

I am also a rather capable person. I can do most things I set out to accomplish. I make a plan; I carry it out. It is all under my control, and I feel good about myself when it all comes together the way I anticipated it would. If there is a problem, I come up with a solution. I enjoy a challenge, because it gives me the opportunity to show everyone how capable I am.

I state these things baldly because inside my head, it can get pretty blatant like this. I don't like to think of myself this way, but in reality, this is what it is. Except lately it has been changing.

Through a series of circumstances, God has blown my conception of my sufficiency wide open. He is helping me realize how stupid I really am, and how prideful has been my idea of myself. Everyday patterns of thinking, which I considered normal and true, He has shown to me to be arrogant and sinful. He has been helping me learn what it means to exist relying on His grace--and His grace alone.

Lately, Scripture has become more important to me--because it is GOD's truth, HIS plan for me. "If you continue in my Word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free" (John 8:31-32). When I find myself in the midst of a situation, instead of immediately coming up with a plan, I have been asking for help to see GOD's plan. (Even as I write this I realize I was about to plan something for myself later without praying about it first--old habits die hard.) I am seeking the truth of Scripture with a humbler mindset, not expecting immediate results, or coming up with a plan to achieve them, but content to wait for the Spirit to do Its work in my heart.

It is a continuing mindset of carrying Jesus' death with me in my heart all day long (2 Corinthians 4:10). I am to be dying as He did. I am to be reflecting not myself and my own capability, but His glory. I am to be surrending to His ideas, His solutions, His plans--because mine are unreliable and inadequate, and His are perfect and powerful.

I don't know if anyone can see this change on the outside. I'm not sure that it matters, except for that prideful part of me that wants kudos for being "more spiritual." This isn't "more spiritual"; it's where I should have been about 20 years ago. Perhaps then things would have gone a lot easier! But I know it's there on the inside...I just pray it will continue and I won't snuff it out with my own ideas.

I wish I could elucidate all this more clearly. It is a work in progress, however; and I don't understand it all myself, yet. But I am SO thankful.