The Adam Effect

So I had quite the amazing night last night. Feeling kinda ancy and slightly bored, which is quite common when there is snow in the air, I decided to go for a drive. I ended up driving about twenty minutes north into the mountains out of the city. There I pulled off the road and just enjoyed watching it snow. Add a little music and this turned into a great time of worship and prayer, just sitting in my car with snow falling around me. It was absolutely amazing.
While worshiping I realized that there has been some joy that has been missing in my life. It is an amazing feeling to just be overflowing with the joy of God everywhere you go. Now there is lots of joy in my life, but it’s different to just be overflowing the joy of God constantly.
As I’m praying about this I began to think how this last month and a half has been filled with so much stress and pressure. I also began to realize as I thought about it, it has been full of spiritual attack. Many people are quick to attribute spiritual attack to Satan trying to bring us down. I think there is much more to spiritual attack than just the advances of Satan and his army, but this is another topic for another day. You can attribute this to Satan, demons, my own flesh, or my own bent humanity, however you want to look at it I sat here faced with my own humanity and sin.
I often feel like we are all like Paul. We all have a thorn in our side. We all have at least one thing in our lives that is a constant struggle, which when we give into will ultimately lowers our own self worth. It is always interesting to me to hear the stories of people who have struggled with things all their life, become a Christian and pray for it to be healed and its gone. These seem to be extremely rare cases but as for the rest of us we are left with this vice, which we struggle with.
This might be a bit of stretch but I think that Satan’s plan is more than to just make us sin. Satan’s plan is to make us feel shame, guilt, and destroy our self worth. This sin is trivial compared to the result of that sin. The more we feel shame, guilt, and a lack of self worth, the more we begin to not just feel it but to believe that. The problem with all of these feelings and thoughts is that these cause us to separate ourselves from God. As Christians, God will never leave us or forsake us, so the only way for us to be torn down is for us to attempt separate ourselves from God. Satan wants the Adam Effect all over again. Adams first reaction after eating the fruit in the garden was to feel shame, guilt, and to hide from God.
I feel like our vice can be a double edge sword. There can be good that can comes from it. Through our struggling I feel that God is looking for a response. God wants us to be dependent upon him. Now this may seem extremely rudimentary but that is exactly why it is so essential. The reason that Jesus was sinless and our perfect atoning sacrifice was not because he followed a set list of rules; Christ was perfect because he lived in perfect unity with God. He did nothing apart from the leading of his father. Jesus was dependent on his father for every breath he took, every step he walked, every person that was healed was not because Jesus could but because it was the leading and will of his father. God wants this same response from us. He wants us to be utterly dependent upon him for everything we have in our lives. When we sin we can either hid in guilt and shame or we can run back to God realizing that we need God and we are dependent on Him for everything. Our sin can drive us from God, or they can cause us to run to God.
I began to realize the times that I have freedom from my vices are the times I am broken and dependent upon God. God wants us to be in a place of dependence on him for everything. I feel like the loss of joy in my life is not simply because of sin or attack but from a loss of dependence upon God for everything in my life. While this is not what I had imagined would come from this night and this may seem so basic to holy Christian living, this was a great reassurance to me and a gentle leading back to the leading and a dependence on God. I can say writing this the next day that the joy is filling once again.