On feeling stuck...

Last night Paul and I came home from Sunday Evening Bible Study and spent the next couple of hours discussing feeling stuck - well, me feeling stuck. Those weren't the words I used exactly, but that's the jist of it. I feel as if in my quest for sanctification and Christlikeness, I've reached a stalemate. I have certain attitudes that cause me no end of trouble. I pray, I read Scripture, I rebuke them, I replace them with proper attitudes. But back they come. It's like that wacky arcade game where the bug heads pop up and you're supposed to wack them with mallets before they duck back down. But this game is not fun, and if I miss the nasty bugs people around me get hurt. This is why I found such great comfort in the quote I posted in my previous blog entry:

“The longer I live the less optimistic I am that I will end without sin and the more grateful I become for the blood of Christ imputed to me. As I grow older I do not feel myself becoming gloriously holy but I find myself feeling great love for the gospel.”

- John Piper

It's good to be reminded you're not alone in your struggles. That even a man as notable in our day as John Piper, struggles just like we do. Sometimes we seem to one another like we've got our acts together, and granted, at any one time or another, one or the other of us will have things more together than someone else - at least in one area of our lives or another. And, of course, we want our acts together. We want to be Christ-like - to be perfect as He is perfect. And that day WILL come. It will come when we see Him face to face. The problem comes, when we get to thinking we've arrived, that we've attained perfection or something close to it in the here and now, or when we leave others with the impression that we have. None of us has reached sinless perfection in any single area of our lives! Not one of us. Not one single area of our lives. We need to remember that and be honest about it, for our own sakes and the sake of those around us.

Now, back to feeling stuck. Perhaps you too are feeling stuck in some area of your walk with Jesus. Don't pretend you're not stuck. Don't plow on as if you were really making progress when you're not. Stop and look to Jesus.

Here are some words of encouragement I found in my reading this morning, once again from Messy Spirituality, by Michael Yaconelli:

"...getting stuck is the prerequisite to getting unstuck.

Getting stuck is a great moment, a summons, a call from within, the glorious music of disaffection and dissatisfaction with our place in life. We get stuck when we want to change but can't, when we want to stop destructive behavior but don't, when the tug-o-war between God's will and ours stands still and we can't move. We're stuck going nowhere, unable to get beyond a particular point.

Getting stuck can be the best thing that could happen to us, because it forces us to stop. It halts the momentum of our lives. We have no choice but to notice what is around us, and we end up searching for Jesus. When we're stuck, we're much more likely to pay attention to our hunger for God and the longings and yearnings we have stifled. Sometimes being stuck is the low point and we say, 'Okay, I give up.' We cannot grow without first giving up and letting go. Getting stuck forces us to see the futility of our situation and to put life in perspective so that we can move on."