I have been really desiring to write for a while but it seemed like each time I was ready to sit down and think, a thought popped into my head telling me to do otherwise.  “Why are you doing this?”…“That is a pretty dumb thing to write about, nobody would understand”.  The pattern typically consisted of an influx of negativity, followed by confusion, capped off by a cowering hand closing the laptop.  Something God has placed in my life as a way to contribute to his kingdom became an afterthought due to a paralyzing numbness of my mind, emotions, and knowledge of my Lord’s saving power in my life.

Like anyone, my mind wanders from time to time.  You can probably sense that when you read what I write.  However, “wandering” typically implies coming back relatively soon.  My mind seems to like to set up camp for a few days after wandering.  At the end of the trek however, I seem to always realize I cannot come back without help.  I hate where I am, and have no map to get me back to the state of mind I came from.  That state of mind becomes a thing of the past…or did it ever even exist?  As the sun sets in the forest of fear and confusion, my mind is tossed around by every crunching leaf and falling branch.  What was that?  Is that really there or is it in my imagination?  As time drags on in the deep dark woods of over analyzing, and second guessing, one thing becomes apparent.  I’m lost, and I need to get out of here because I don’t like it in this place.  It isn’t me, and it’s an empty environment.  I don’t belong here and I want to go home.  So I come crawling back to all I know…Grace.

This “forest” I was speaking of obviously isn’t a physical place but a mental, and spiritual one.  It has been a place I, like many others have tried much of my life to navigate through with no luck.  A place that every Christian learns more about painfully each day.  This crazy, wacked out, scary place is our flesh.  My flesh is different than your flesh, but at the roots, it is the same.  It’s like different kinds of trees…all trees have roots, but what’s above the ground isn’t always the same.  Everyone’s tree is different.  Being completely honest, something I struggle with deeply in selfishness.  I’m a self-centered guy, and at times I feel everything around me is centered on the basis of how it will affect me.  People might not see it all the time, but when I see my heart, I feel a massive sense of shame because of the black spots I see all over it.  This selfish thought process can take me down roads I am not at all prepared or fit to handle, but it’s like they are disguised as the truth.  Soon it affects my relationships, my choices, and my joy.  It literally sucks the life out of me.  That’s when the wandering happens…the mind games.  Satan’s torture tactic to get us to break down, and give in to whatever compelling sin is being presented at the moment.  An easy way out, or so it seems before the fact but anyone who has travelled down that path of giving into that way of thinking, absorbing the fears and not holding on to truth knows it’s a road leading to nowhere.  All it is really, is a big trap used over and over again to keep us from being who we really are.  The way we were designed to live.  There is a way out however.

The amazing thing is that when I see my sinful heart, I know that the heart I am looking at has been replaced and is washed clean every morning.  Why?  Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection on the cross.  Something I know I can’t do is be perfect, and blameless.  Jesus Christ was just that, however.  The perfect sacrifice.  Whenever I start to think I have a shot or even strive towards it, I am quickly humbled because I just start wandering and realize I’m at a place I can’t get out of on my own.  I wander and see that sinful heart, feel it’s tugging me to act, but am no longer destined to listen to it.  I can rest in his power.

There is an alternative option now, one that isn’t easy but one that leads to unity with the way our creator designed us to be originally. The way of freedom through trusting in God’s perfect grace, and love.  A clean replacement heart, just waiting for us.  This heart, is who we really are, not the old one covered in darkness.  That sin’s tab has already been picked up, it is a done deal.  The selfishness was all in the old heart, and when I feel it tugging at me to do something or think something, I know it isn’t true because Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. HE is where I should go, what I should hold on to, no matter what sounds cause my mind to whip back and forth in that forest of my flesh. That selfishness?  It isn’t me, just like that thing you struggle with so badly isn’t you once you’ve accepted Jesus.  You are dead to it.  It’s the old you.  The time to experience God’s grace, love, peace, joy, comfort, and guidance is right now!  The time to stop selling ourselves short by wandering in some stupid forest that’s keeping us from reaching our design always will be and always has been yesterday.