grumble grumble grumble

We had to do a project where we walked ourselves through a moment of grumbling using the model we had been taught.  We had to walk ourselves through these questions and unpack our hearts.  Sanctification hurts.  I hope this resonates with all of you in some way.

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1. The Situation – I didn’t do as well on my Clyde paper (the previous post on this blog) as I had hoped, and then Professor Powlison proceeded to pick out one paper that wasn’t mine and praise it for ten minutes straight.
2. My Reactions – Grumbling.  Thoughts of victimization.  Feelings of wounded pride.  I felt misunderstood, therefore isolated and embarrassed.  I was angry at the grader.  Venting in the form of false confession.  False repentance to heal my wounded pride by looking “self-aware” and righteous.
3. Expectations, Demands, Cravings, and Beliefs? – I believe I’m already ahead of the game of most of the people to be a counselor.  I deserved to be picked out and praised as unique from everyone else.  I need to be affirmed.  I need my security to come from man and I expect it because I have been good at manipulating it from people.
4. Consequences – The Spirit within me grieving over the control of the flesh.  Pulling others into my frustration.  Grumbling over my grumbling over this.  Feeling prideful and hating that feeling.
5. Who is God in this? – “He is my crown.” (I’ll unpack this and more later)
6. What should rule me? – Christ has purchased my security.  No matter how much I crave and desire autonomy and works –based righteousness, I cannot accomplish it.  I am weak.  I am needy.  Christ has securely chosen me and I cannot add to or take away from that salvation.
7. What should I do? – Relent.  Pray.  Be needy.  Find myself in a receptive posture of finitude in need of Him.  Truly repent and truly confess to those I falsely repented and falsely confessed to last week.
8. Consequences? – We’ll see.

Analysis
After going through this last week, I knew I had to do this paper on this situation.  I was really shocked at how hurt I really was that the Clyde paper I thought so brilliant wasn’t received as such.  It really hurt, and I proceeded to gossip about the grader and complain by “confessing” how frustrated I was.  And no one called me out on it.  I’m too good at sinning.  I’ve lived my life manipulating, deceiving, and lying to get people to do what I want, namely, provide me affirmation and security.  I’ve only seen this in the past year or so, and this explains so much of my behavior past and present.  How much time I seek and spend with girls; why I’ve always tended to spend time with “older people” and adults; why I’m so intent on no one not catching me sinning; why I’m good at seeing my sin, but not good at repenting from it.

In the end, I see that so much of this comes down to where my security and approval lie.  Through this project, I saw that even this one instance was that.  At first, as I thought through it in the moment, I figured “this grumbling is coming from pride.”  Period.  That’s it.  It was only later I realized that was too easy.  I had fallen into the typical “I’m prideful.  I need to not be.”  And I was done.  I was able to see something in this lack of depth, though.  I have been noticing that recently I have been less inclined to confess my sins to God out of embarrassment.  That made no sense to me for while until I realized it was sort of a good sign.  Previously, I felt free to confess to God, but not out of security and comfort and grace.  It was because he wasn’t here.  I couldn’t see Him.  He was distant; so in the same way it’s easier to write a letter and tell a friend something hurtful than tell them face to face, so it was with God.  This embarrassment was actually a sign that the recent stressors of school had brought me into so much dependence on Christ I was actually feeling shame for my sin.  I saw this play out this past week for this paper for the worse.

I kept putting this off, and it wasn’t just from lack of time.  No; it was my knowledge that it would hurt to go deep.  I would see stuff in my heart that I didn’t want to see.  And now that I’ve sat down to do this it has hurt, but it’s so good.  God has to do surgery on us to take all that’s bad out.  It was only today as I wrote this that I realized my false confession and false repentance to my friends last week.  It was only last night as I thought through this I realized this was a security issue.

God showed me once more that so much of my affirmation for what I desire to do with my life was wrapped up in that Clyde paper.  I’ve thought that “if only Powlison could see or hear of my work, then he would know the gifts I have, and then I can be distinguished and then all my striving could mean something.  I would be approved.”  But no.  God loves me too much to let that work.  It would be His wrath to have let that affirmation come in the way I was hoping.  It would be His judgment as He gave me over to the desires of my heart.  But no, he shatters my delusions of grandeur to make me cling to Him, and that is where this project was most helpful.

I’m really good at questions 1-4.  Even with only a little thought, I’ve wrestled through these ideas long enough to know what I most struggle with and can lay those out.  But it’s 5-8 that terrifies me.  I’m really good at putting myself in the pit of despair and condemnation, but it’s only so I can come up with terms to get myself out.  If I can get myself out, then I can get some of the credit for it.  If I can just change myself, then I can stand before God at the end of time and receive some glory for all I had done to bring me there.  “If I can be a good counselor, approved by Professor Powlison, then I could rest,” I think to myself, but I know it’s a lie.  As soon as that happen, the bar raises higher that I must strive to reach and attain.  I don’t understand repentance very well because I don’t know it apart from just more striving.  “Doing better next time” or “never doing it again.”  But that doesn’t work with grumbling.  It’s not an action as much as it is a state of the heart (as all sins ultimately are, but you know what I mean).  It’s a sin that you literally cannot will yourself not to do.  It forces you into the place it forced me.  To be needy.  To cry out to God and seek Him.

That’s why my answer to number Question 5 is so brief.  I can unpack all of the “right” theological answers to that question that I can come up with in my mind, but this time I was forced just to pray, and ask God for once, “What right now, subjectively, in this moment do I need You to be?  How do You desire to reveal yourself in this moment?”  And right then He answered my cry.  The thought came to my mind: “I am your crown.”  That was it.  And that was all I needed.  I then found a verse I’d never read before that said that.  It’s Isaiah 28:5 which says “In that day the Lord of hosts will be a crown of glory, and a diadem of beauty, to the remnant of his people” (ESV).  The passage talks about how the evil man tries to create his own crown through his striving, but to the Lord’s people, the Lord Himself will be their crown.

This project let me see my need once more.  It showed me in a deeper way than I had previously ever known that at the end of the day He is my reward, and He gives Himself freely and Sovereignly.  He is truly what all my strivings seek to find falsely.  I seek a crown with all my might and try to get that through self-aggrandizing motives underlying Counseling papers, through false confession and bitter resentment, and through strivings of my own flesh.  But He is the crown I already securely have, and therefore seek all the more.  There is a freedom to obey that lies in the accomplishment of Christ’s work on my behalf.  Seeing that my crown is eternal, strong, and unfading, I don’t need to earn it.  And it’s in that rest that I have it, and it’s in my strivings that I lose it (experientially, not eternally).  True Christian liberty is that freedom to obey that comes from this notion that this project reminded me of.  Christ is my crown.  I can now strive to enter into the rest of that.  So my response for this situation must be one of receptiveness and need by praying, confessing, and crying out to my Father to change me in the ways I cannot change myself.

My conclusion:
I grumble when something challenges what my security is in; and nothing can challenge Him, the One I have as my Security, Righteousness, Approval, Glory, and Crown.  Selah.