When we talk about pride and idolatry, it seems pretty cut-and-dry. Be humble, and don’t think too highly of yourself. Got it. But our sinful flesh seems to find new ways of deceiving us and luring us back into our old, wicked ways.
I finally had to call my counselor and friend.
“I don’t recall, at any moment, consciously thinking to myself, ‘I don’t need God’s help. I can do this on my own,’ but I’ve realized that’s exactly how I’ve been living,” I told her, nearly choking back tears.
The honeymoon period of my faith had ended, and when I felt the magic sizzling out, I started feeling guilty, and then bored. And then guilty for feeling bored. I wasn’t doing enough to nurture my faith, I thought. That’s why it didn’t feel as magical anymore. Subconsciously, I was telling myself that the Holy Spirit of God had left me because I wasn’t doing enough for Him. If that thought had made its way through my heart and into my thick skull to penetrate my brain, I would have realized how silly it sounded. But it was the feeling that suck with me.
What I forgot was to trust in God. Not myself. When I didn’t “feel” close to God, I allowed myself to slip, because I trusted in my feelings more than I trusted in God.
In John 10:28-29, Jesus says that we believers are His sheep. He says, “I know them, and they follow Me […] no one can snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them our of the Father’s hand.” Somehow I allowed myself to believe that if I didn’t “feel” Him, He wasn’t close to me. And so I panicked. I tried doing more works to find my way back. Like I could earn His favor again.
I imagine God looking down on me and laughing, a lot.
When I finally realized that I’d been spinning in circles, fighting a losing battle against myself, my flesh and my pride, another verse came back to me. In Jeremiah 29, God tells the prophet, “I know the plans I have for you […] plans for welfare and not calamity, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and you will find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.” (vv. 11-13).
I was running in circles trying to earn God’s grace through works, but I wasn’t seeking Him. I traded in my devotional time and prayer for simple escapes and guilty pleasures like doom scrolling. Any good works I did were out of compulsion rather than good will, and my heart was growing bitter and angry.
I’d made a laundry list of decisions without consulting God, and I was growing impatient with Him when these ill-thought plans failed. I felt alone.
I was reminded during a sermon one day that God disciplines the ones He loves. And I believe that these failed plans were a result of making decisions without regard for His will, or even His blessing. God doesn’t plan for our calamity—we bring it on ourselves. That doesn’t mean He won’t allow us to suffer the consequences in order to make His point, and ultimately to bring us back. To achieve the end result for His glory and our good.
This verse confirms that God does, in fact, allow calamity to strike in our lives to bring us back. God says, “Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me”. That’s all He wants.
In context, God had just sent the Israelites into exile, delivering them into the hands of the king of Babylon. Jeremiah pled with them to turn from their wicked ways and to worship God, their Father in heaven who had delivered them from slavery in Egypt and who had led them and nourished them through the wilderness. Instead they listened to the false prophets that God had warned them against. So, God allowed calamity to fall on them, to bring them back to Him.
I think many of us go through phases like this at some point, and to some degree. We fall back into old habits of relying on ourselves, on some level worshiping the creation rather than the Creator. But it’s all part of God’s work in us, to perfect us until the day of Christ. Because while He may allow trouble into our lives, that’s not His plan. His plan is for our welfare. And no matter what choices we make along the way that bring calamity upon us, He will continue to work all things together for our good.
Emily is a Christian mother and blogger who lives in sunny Florida with her three children. She works full-time setting appointments at a home remodeling company and in her scarce free time she enjoys serving her fellow brothers and sisters in Christ however possible, and spending as much time in prayer, Bible reading and studying, and fellowship as possible. As a recovering addict, she has a heart for addiction ministry, and for creating things so she can give back to those who have need.