Friday, November 18, 2011

Spiritual Growth Through Embarrassment: Not as much fun as you might think


I think my brain is muddled this morning.  I can’t follow the comparisons and contrasts that Chambers uses.  I think I get the difference he makes between personality and individuality, but the “Savior” for “Son” contrast and the comparison of John 8:36 and Galatians 2:20 I also didn’t follow.  Then the “energized” versus “energy” insistence part lost me. That last paragraph was full of stuff that I could not connect.

That being said, there were things I did get, or at least I think I do.  The capacity for my Master built into me is something that I have tried to fill with all sorts of things, none of which worked; in fact some were incredibly destructive.  One of them was shame, which I just stored and used to fuel much of my behavior.  Resentments, selfishness, the resulting anger, and the absolute glut of shame were all things that I allowed to clog my capacity for my Master.  All the time I was aware at some level that the capacity was meant for Him.

The underlying issue I had to accept was a need for medical help.  The stuff I had stored had affected me physiologically, and that was reinforcing the problem.  But I also have had to come to terms with the fact that I have a natural tendency toward that physiological problem.  Once addressed honestly, the reservoir could be emptied, and made ready for my Master to dwell in.  And He has come in.  He has begun to cleanse me and purge me of things that have needed to go.  Now, I guess He has brought me to the point where He can be more direct and somewhat harsh.

One thing that has been a trait of mine for a long time is my habit of working out thoughts while talking.  So, I start one place, and somewhere in the middle switch once or twice, ending up somewhere completely different than where I began and often contradicting where I started.  It’s really confusing for anyone listening to me so when I do it publicly I give the impression of not being wrapped too tight.  A compounding problem is that I don’t always end up in the right place anyway.  Just because I work through something verbally, doesn’t mean I will come out in the right spot.  So, I can be very confusing, and wrong.

Well I was that last night in a study on Biblical versus Atheistic World Views.  In discussions of philosophy it is really embarrassing to be both disjointed and wrong at the same time.  What happens is that rather than being sensitive to my Master’s prompting, I wanted to appear smart.  So, history is one of my familiar areas, and I spoke up about that.  But history requires a context, and when I got muddled in the context, I lost my initial point, and wound up somewhere else entirely, which was wrong, or least the point was wrong, the information may have been right.  What’s even more embarrassing is that I’m pretty sure that even my initial point was wrong, or at least incomplete enough to be valueless to the discussion.

What I needed was correction at that point so those around me were given something clear, and the pastor supplied that perfectly.  The result was that I was embarrassed; a feeling I don’t have very often.  It feels entirely different if I believe I haven’t been heard or that I’m right and the others are not accepting it, and so on.  Those feelings are usually frustration or derision; this was because I was wrong, and wrong publically.  It felt very different, and it something that I believe my Master is using to shed more of what Chambers would call my individuality and freeing my personality.  Like I said, direct and harsh (not the pastor, my Master), and just what I need.  Who would have thought I’d have to come 1400 miles to find it in a small depressed town.  Is my Master amazing or what?

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