Willing

Recovery starts with a willingness to do the hard work of God’s will. God, I offer myself to thee to build with me and do with me as thou wilt.

John 7:17 If anyone is willing to do His will, he will know of the teaching, whether it is of God or whether I speak from Myself.

Man I got worked up this morning. I’ve been sitting here at Starbucks after a short conversation with a friend about teaching biology at a nearby Christian school. After he left, my mind raced with memories of my challenges there as superintendent. I began to feel rage and anger towards some of the people with fundamentalist mindsets. I replayed the tapes of conversations, decisions and meetings. I was trapped in the venom of a vindictive mindset, thinking about how I could have taken them down through persuasive speech and pronouncing judgements of my own.

As I think back, my downward spiral seemed to start with my reading of James 4. I saw myself clearly in the first portion,

“9Let there be tears for what you have done. Let there be sorrow and deep grief. Let there be sadness instead of laughter, and gloom instead of joy. 10Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up in honor.” Verse nine speaks poignantly to my life this past year, but I confess, that for me, the humbleness of verse ten is illusive.

Then I read on and thought about the judgement of conservative Christians toward their fellow believers.

“Warning against Judging Others – 11Don’t speak evil against each other, dear brothers and sisters.* If you criticize and judge each other, then you are criticizing and judging God’s law. But your job is to obey the law, not to judge whether it applies to you. 12God alone, who gave the law, is the Judge. He alone has the power to save or to destroy. So what right do you have to judge your neighbor?

I thought about the trouble the school principal experienced at the hand of a strong fundamentalist woman for his first year as school leader. And I became full of rage toward people in my past.

God forgive me. I am not automatically a humble person. It is often not my first thought to be humble but to be protective of my own viewpoint and of my need to be affirmed.

I am caught in the loop of not being enough, not being perfect, not living up to the expectations form others that I conjure up in my own faulty thinking. I have deceived myself and my addict has controlled my behavior and my erroneous thinking. I used to soothe these negative thoughts and the strong feelings of anger with an organism. Thank God, now I can sit here for a time, realize what is really going on, know that I am not going to die, and express myself more appropriately, as in this journal entry.

Instead of leaving Starbucks in a huff, succumbing to lust, and looking for someone to act out with, I came to realize what was really going on. Note to self, strong emotions continue to be an incredibly deceptive trigger for me. Thank God that by his grace I was able to take a different route today. I am willing to do work like this, which I believe is the will of God for my life.

Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do thy will.