Monday, May 13, 2013 --dealing With The Damage

In Twelve Step programs, the seventh step invites us to humbly ask God to remove our shortcomings.  How do we do such a thing?  What does coming humbly look like?  How do we approach God?  How do we come as people who feel unsafe and let down, people who act in certain destructive ways just so we can cope with life?   How do we come and ask God to remove these protective shortcomings?

I sought the LORD, and He answered me; He delivered me from all my fears.  Those who look to Him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame. This poor man called, and the LORD heard him; He saved him out of all his troubles. (Psalm 34:4-6 NIV)

God keeps it simple.  “Look to me and call to me and I will answer you and save you.”  This is pretty unfamiliar to us.  This speaks of love and understanding, welcome and acceptance.  Can this really be true for us, with all that we’ve done?  Is there really a safe God?  We trusted many others in the past and they let us down.  In the face of our shortcomings, God offers us hope because God promises His love for us is unconditional.  The only way any shortcoming will ever become something of our past is for our hearts and lives to be filled with enduring love. As love fills our hearts we feel safe and no longer need those destructive, broken behaviours and habits that we relied on.

So we come to God asking Him to help us believe that we are loved unconditionally.  In the most full-blown episodes of our shortcomings we are loved as deeply by God as we are in the moments when we are most at peace with God and our neighbour.  In someone else’s worst lashing out against us in a way that expresses their shortcomings, God’s love is available to hold us safe at a level deeper than any wrong can touch. We come asking God to reveal to us how long and wide and high and deep His love for us really is, how available it is to us, and has been for our entire lives, whether we were aware of it or not.

I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:16-19 NIV)