But God, I want it now! I want to be like Jesus now! I want to be able to handle that messed up situation in a Godly manner with love and patience and compassion without struggling against my old nature now!
Sometimes I don't like the idea of progression rather than current perfection. I don't want to have to strive for the goal of perfection while accepting that I am being made more like Jesus from moment to moment. That's because of the feeling that progress is still failure. I had one of those moments last Tuesday. I had a seriously messed up situation, and praise be to God, I didn't handle it like I would have in the past. My old nature and natural reflex were kept in check enough to so that I didn't get rude or loud or go off on the folks who were themselves out of line and inconvenienced me. But I did get frustrated and angry and left in a huff because any attempt to try to get reparations would have let the beast of the old man out. Better to let it go than slip into raising the issue that I had been done wrong and someone needed to make it right, and now!
It was a mid-level finish in my mind. I didn't act like a complete heathen, but I don't think I showed a lot of Jesus either. And that made it feel like a total fail. You did better than you used to in such situations, something in my spirit said. Yeah, but I still didn't get it right, said my frustration over my performance. It reminds me of the days of early sobriety, when I felt frustrated over still struggling with my first instinct when things got hard. That first instinct was to drink or drug or both. I complained about it to the gentleman taking me through the steps, whose response that it might be my first instinct, but I hadn't followed through on the thought and was still sober didn't satisfy me. But I don't want to have to fight that desire every time something doesn't go my way!
He said something that didn't seem to help, but really did. First, he kind of chuckled, which frustrated me even more, and then he said, Dalyn, you're wanting 10 years of sobriety in 10 weeks. It doesn't work like that. It takes time. You'll get there if you just stick with it.
He was right. It took a while, although not nearly 10 years, but things changed. I can't remember when the last time a situation caused me to think, I need a drink. He was also right that I wanted the results of practicing the spiritual principles of recovery for years at the beginning of the journey. And that hasn't really changed. I want the ability of prayer warriors who have been fighting on their knees for decades, and I want it now, if not yesterday. I want to be able to radiate peace in the midst of chaos like my father does, without having to struggle against my lifetime of embracing the chaos and feeding the fires. I want the Christ-like nature of a saint whose been walking with Jesus for 80 years now.
But it doesn't work that way. Some things only come as you travel the road. You don't get everything at the start of the journey. But it will come. As you continue to walk in God's will, He will do the transformation work. We will be more like Jesus, and the struggle against the flesh will lessen as we walk faithfully by the power of the Spirit of God within us. The truth is that there are more and more instances where my first instinct is to respond like Jesus than there used to be. It's not always a fight not to do the old default actions. But that old default is still there. It always will be, to some extent, as long as I remain on this side of eternity. And I am not satisfied with the progress. I almost never am. I want to reach the goal and do it right, all the time, every time, and without an inner war!
Today I am grateful for that dissatisfaction. That may sound strange, but it's true. If I were satisfied with the progress, there would be no reason to press on when the fight gets tough or when I feel totally drained. I don't want to be happy or comfortable with almost right. I want to always be aware that even when I do better, which is great, I still want and need to be more like Jesus. Until I see Him and am made wholly like Him, I will never be enough like Him to be satisfied. That's a good thing. I want what I want, and I want it now. And although I can't have that, it makes me work towards it. Sometimes the best thing we can be is dissatisfied.
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