You could call this the struggle of being me. Today, I struggled as I do every day to declutter my mind and spend my time doing what I want to do. I have total flexibility and have reached the point in my life where I am truly free to do what I want when I want. Yet, I repeatedly give in to sitting around, not exercising. I am so scattered that I can’t stay focused on one thing for more than a few minutes when I want to focus my time and energy on spirituality and fulfillment. I want to spend quality time with my kids and wife, but instead, I waste time on trivial non-sense and pretend to be busy… BUSY doing what? Nothing that matters.
I have a job, but again, it’s the best job in the world and I love it so it’s not really like work and it affords me the time to explore, create, and focus on just about anything. Dream job, right!? But I seem to be missing the discipline or passion. I struggle to find the time and focus for what really matters to me.
I have a priority list that I try to live by, but it is seeming like a vision statement that I am striving for, not actually living out.
Priority number one: My relationship with God and how I fit within creation.
Priority number two: My relationships with family and close friends.
Priority number three: my physical, psychological, and spiritual health.
Priority number four: Work and Recreation
So, why with all the flexibility I could imagine and a job that includes and encourages all of my priorities, can’t I fulfill my desires. Is it lack of discipline or focus or desire or… Or worse, do I not want what I want or love what I want enough to do what I say I am about.
The best I can come up with is what the Apostle Paul wrote about in Romans 7:15–20, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do — this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.”
He takes it a little too far for me because I can’t push it off on sin. I own it. I can’t push it off on sin or some tragic thing in my past. I can’t blame the world or the people around me. I can’t blame a physical or psychological disorder. I can’t even blame my spiritual condition. I own it. I understand Paul’s point because in Christ I am a new creation, more than a conqueror (Romans 8).
Therefore, his rationale is that the issue, problem, bad stuff, or whatever is not only caused by sin but so ingrained in us that without the Holy Spirit it is impossible to escape and even with the Holy Spirit it is very difficult to breakthrough. Maybe I am a newish creation, but a creation non-the-less being molded by the Potter’s hands.
This little confession is the first step in finding freedom from myself, the self that only sees the priorities as a vision, something to be sought after. As opposed to someone committed to living out the priorities because they are my priorities and I will embody them.
