Logic Will Break Your Heart

Today Taylor and Sara and I were talking and sharing various things we were struggling with, and it felt like I kept hearing (and saying): “I need to more disciplined with ___” and “I should try harder in the area of ___” and “I have to be better at ___” And to some extent this is always true, we will always have areas of weakness or needed growth.
But on the inside it just kept building and growing, and as I continued to think of all the areas in which I fall short, and all the things I would like to do more or better and the things I want to do less or stop altogether, I felt completely overwhelmed.
There are all these things to do or stop doing or regulate or improve, but the more I think about them, the more tired and unable to move I feel. Why is that? In some strange paradox of truth, discipline is the gateway to freedom. But in some twisted reality of sin, “discipline” involves judgment and pride and failure and impossible standards and disappointment.

And I think it is because I look at God from far away and, if I want to get closer, discipline is the mountain range I have to climb. And because He is so Big and so Holy, in my mind the mountains and the gap just increases and (again, in my mind) He gives up and stops watching because it is becoming more and more obvious that I will never make it. Though He sometimes glances over His shoulder and looks disapprovingly on my lack of progress.

But that is so wrong and upside-down and backwards. Because He IS so Big and so Holy and so Majestic, and there is an impossibly large gap and insurmountable barrier between us and Him. But we are not the ones to cross it. And He is not the one turning His back. He has already overcome the distance, and I am the one who ignores Him. And if I were to open my eyes and glimpse a mere nano-speck of His glory, words like ‘sacrifice’ and ‘discipline’ would seem out of place in regard to the willing surrender spurred on by joy and love and devotion. If I understood God’s greatness, my capacity for pain and suffering for His sake would most likely be much greater than any actual suffering I will ever endure.

In the end, I want freedom. I want to be able to believe and embrace the fact that there is nothing for me to earn- I have not the means, and the object has already been given as a gift. I want to know, to KNOW, that He is Good, and that I am loved, and that He is so Lovely and Mighty and Sexy and Fierce and Beautiful and Just that loving Him and serving Him with every thought and word and deed is the only logical course to take. That it is not only logical, but inevitable. I want to see discipline as it really is, a means of transport rather than a destination, and a structure through which I can more readily comprehend His grace rather than a currency with which I seek to purchase it.