There are times I find myself in predicaments and situations that could bury me if I let it. I can find myself drowning beneath a whole spectrum of things that I can’t control; things that can paralyze me with anxiety and fear; tossing and turning at 3am wondering what’s going to come of it all. These experiences reveal to me my limitedness. I can get exhausted wrestling to change the future or control the outcome of my circumstances. God never made us with those abilities.
Where do we get the idea we can? For the answer to that, we need to rewind the tape to the beginning of Genesis. The “temptation” in the Garden of Eden finds its fingers in every avenue we try to live today… without God, that is. Satan was speaking with Eve in chapter 3:4-6 saying, “‘You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’ So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.” Why did she believe Satan? He stirred in her the notion that God was keeping something good from her. Bottom line, she desired to be like God (and not in the way we seek to be by the Holy Spirit today). Satan said, “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Don’t we all want to be like God in that way? She didn’t want world domination per se, but to be limitless. It is interesting how today we gravitate toward comments like, “Honey, you can be ANYTHING you want to be. You can do anything you set your hands to.” How disappointing it is to learn when you are older that this is simply not true. One drunk driver drifting across the line, one organ disease, one cheeseburger too many will reveal quickly that we are limited. I get the sentiment, right? We want our kids to try hard and to excel. It’s the backbone of America, but this world is broken. Can you see how, perhaps, this has set up generations with the false idea that they can live without God? We are very limited. We only have so much energy, and so much strength; only so much endurance and intelligence, only so much time. Our vitality is on a nonstop conveyor belt downward. If you think you can do anything, go ahead and try to swim from California to Japan. Be sure to wear a beacon so we can find your remains when you don’t make it. When we think that way, we’re confounded when we try to rectify the “I can do ANYTHING!” mentality with Jesus’, “Apart from me, you can do NOTHING.” How do you live in that?
Embracing your limitedness is quite radical, don’t you think? Or maybe you think I mean that we’re to become lazy sloths with ho-hum attitudes. “I can’t do that… I can’t do anything… waaaa waaaa!” Ha! …um, no. What I mean is, it is time to get over ourselves. I am human, therefore I am limited! I know it! And it is totally okay! When we embrace the fact that we are limited it causes us to become dependent. A man in a wheelchair, like my aged father, needs to embrace the fact that his motor skills are limited by his condition. He will need help to change clothes, eat, bathe, or even to use the restroom. He is totally dependent. The difference between us and the man in the wheelchair is that he knows he needs help with everything. Being dependent often gets looked at as a negative attribute, and it definitely should be when capable people manipulate others or abuse support systems to put off living in an independently sustainable way. But now let’s turn that statement over to say we are not capable of our own Christian salvation, holiness, perfection, or ministry. Sure, in our society, you can find a way to live safely. You can find a vocation and even get a sense of purpose from it. You can regiment your time and finances to make a name for yourself in business or in life. You can differentiate a foolish choice from a wise one. (Keep in mind most of us are starting off our lives with an advantage here in the US. Many others are born into a limiting difficulty). BUT you cannot do enough good to make yourself righteous. You cannot lead yourself into ministry. You cannot empower yourself for ministry work. You cannot make God-aligned choices with your own logic. You’ll never, because of your own goodness, inadvertently happen into righteousness and Godliness. You WILL NEVER BE GOD, though you may feel like you can (that’s the Edenic temptation); you can never partake of the divine nature by your own will and muscle. He is eternal; we are created …and there is a huge chasm between us.
When we embrace our limitedness, we’re forced into undeniable dependence on Another; the Eternal One. Paul once quipped, “I CAN DO ALL THINGS!!!!! …through Christ who strengthens me.” From the outside, Paul may look like he, himself, was one unstoppable machine of ministry; a great man of religious integrity. Gutsy. Fearless! But that would be missing the full picture. Paul embraced his limitedness. In fact, he told us that anything from his own strength was something he looked at as dung (Phil 3:2-11). Let me help you with this one. Dung is off-putting and repellent. There’s a lot of it in our backyard, now that the snow is gone, thanks to our dog. We don’t host dinner parties in the middle of the backyard this time of year. It’s offensive. That is how Paul saw his own abilities and strength; off-putting and offensive. Because of that, he knew he was limited and had to become heavily dependent on the Holy Spirit. With his limits fully understood, he called on the limitless one to come. It was the Spirit of Christ at work inside Paul that made Paul unstoppable. It wasn’t Paul’s natural ability and he didn’t just happen to be this type of man. Paul “strove”… he “fought”… he “beat himself into submission”… not to be a better man but to know God; to engage God, who has no limits.
My prayer is that we grow in knowing just how very limited we are without Him; and that when we embrace our limitedness, we would become more and more dependent on God.
-=pastor tom
