Numb
Sometimes I get tired.
I get tired of fighting the good fight. I get tired of taking every thought captive. I get tired of putting on the armor of God. I get tired of taking up the Sword of the Spirit. I get tired of reading, and seeking, and knocking, and asking, and waiting.
I just want to be done. Done with all this (picture me making a vague motion with my arms to indicate my present corporeal form). Can I just be done, God? I plead, like a child at summer camp. Can I just come home? I’m lonely. I’m sweaty. I’m tired of living in this tent. It’s falling apart. The other kids don’t always play nicely. Please?
And He answers: nope. Not time yet.
He is not done with me. For whatever reason, He wants me to stay here, at Earthcamp, where the bugs bite and the sun burns and the marshmallows fall into the fire and my enemies kick the shit out of me regularly.
Sometimes, when I feel rebellious, I decide that I just won’t play. Forget the program, I’m going to do my own thing. And my own thing is to sit here on a log and stare into space. Just pretty much quit everything. Because really, what difference does it make? Will anyone even notice? Can’t I just bide my time until the trumpet call that signals camp’s end?
I tell myself that there is something in-between being eaten up with zeal and consumed by zombies. Both options are just so…painful. Surely, if I sit on the sidelines, curl myself into the fetal position, protect my vital organs, then both God and zombie alike will pass by me, unnoticing. The race can be run by the strong–those who are born with better genes, happier pasts, more thorough educations–and the zombies can dine upon the foolish–those who run in circles, making lots of noise.
Me? I’ll just sit here quietly; I won’t make a sound. No one will see me or care. It is a strategy that served me well in childhood when battles raged and shrapnel flew.
The problem is that Earthcamp holds no neutral zone. There is no Switzerland in the realm of spiritual warfare.
Sure, I may experience a respite from attack when I do nothing, but that is only because the enemy of my soul knows full well that I am now doing his job for him. He can focus his efforts elsewhere; I have just made the battle easier. And the spreading numbness that takes over my heart when I sit and stare builds itself into a thick yellow callous of indifference.
Apathy and passivity…these are just other words for the truth: I am rebellious. And not in a good, Jesus-was-a-rebel kind of way. In an I-am-despising-His-offer-of-life-abundant kind of way. I am telling Him that He is not enough for the journey, that His Spirit cannot give me the strength I need, that His tools for victory are lacking. I am telling Him, basically, that He lied to me.
Yet God is not a man, that He should lie.
Fatigue is not a sin. He gives strength for the day, and for the battle. He gives weapons for the warfare. But it is up to me to choose to pick them up and use them. It is up to me to choose to wait upon Him, and have my strength renewed. But the renewal will not come if I am sulking and pouting.
His truth–His word–will not fill up my heart and mind when they are already full to overflowing with complaint and fretfulness.
Only in rebuking the lies and having confidence in His wisdom will I find the renewal I need. When I determine, once and for all, that God is always good, and I am always loved, I rise up with wings like an eagle, and soar.
Isaiah 30:15
Isaiah 40:31