Release from Self-condemnation

Devotions for those who are weary of feeling not good enough, regardless of the source of those feelings.

Tuesday, October 16, 2018

Update

At this writing, my daughter and I are on our third journey through 100 Days to Freedom.  We both feel that God has graciously provided us Scripture-based truths custom tailored for our respective journeys, with His Word as the firm foundation.  To read and reread is appropriate as we seek to take hold of that for which Christ has taken hold of us (see Philippians 3:12).

I can't worry about whether it seems odd that I am the one who recorded the devotions in this book and yet I don't seem to have fully implemented the insights therein. I view my freedom journey as something like that Eustace experienced in Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis;  Eustace removed successive layers of dragon skin on his own but finally released himself to Aslan's claws.  Each journey through 100 Days has removed successive layers of my "dragon skin," and my daughter says the same.  We are learning more of Christ--struggling, failing, succeeding, and struggling again--but each time we are moving further into His perfect will for our lives.

I often have an illuminating or encouraging insight in response to our day's reading, and will begin recording those here as an outward sign of my own journey forward into becoming more like my Savior.  "Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 3:12-14).

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Thoughts from day 64:  I deny myself for the sake of Christ’s life in me, I discipline the flesh to strengthen the spirit.  This casts my vote on the side of what is true, more real than the temporal, more true than my own physical perceptions; scales fall from my eyes and I can see.  To indulge the flesh is to indulge a chosen blindness to truth, it sedates me so that I don’t respond appropriately to the truth of God’s presence with me. 

Friday, January 26, 2018

Have Thine Own Way

As I move away from what some call food addiction but what is, in my own life, just a sinful, unrelenting desire to have things my own way, I am aware of how tiring it is to carry the sin of refusal to submit to God in everything. 

In reference to those who carried their idols with them from camp to camp, Isaiah 46:1b tells us that the things we carry with us become burdensome to us.  Matthew Henry's concise commentary on this verse says "What we were sick for, God can make us sick of."*

This is hopeful.  I don't have to be bound by my own desires.  I can pray, "Have thine own way, Lord..." 

And I do. 
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*Matthew Henry references Isaiah 46:1 in his commentary on Judges 4:17-24, where this quote can be found.