A Ramble About "I Can't"

Exhausted. That's what I feel right now. That's what we all feel right now. It's been raining on and off for days now, and we've been pretty well confined to the inside of the RV, only running outside when we have to feed the outdoor dogs or check on them. This exhaustion runs deep. It runs down to the very core of my strength, mind, emotions, and spirit.

All of the impossible challenges which have been thrown at us have taken their toll, and my fear reaction is also exhausted to the point where new difficulties and dangers are looked within with a sad calmness because I know deep within myself there's nothing I can do about them.

I am at the point now where “I can't” is becoming ingrained deeply into my psyche. All of my bravado is spent and gone, and any real courage I had before is itself also completely spent. I now understand what Watchman Nee described in The Normal Christian Life with his illustration of the drowning man and the strong swimmer on the shore waiting until he is exhausted from his struggling to save himself before he dives in and pulls him to safety. This is where I'm at right now.

I've known for years, decades, from reading different spiritual and mystic authors that the key to living a “Normal Christian Life” was total surrender and giving up. That is, recognizing that your own strength is totally inadequate and giving up the use of it. But it is one thing to read about it and attempt to put it into practice on your own (which is oxymoronic in and of itself), and quite another for the Lord to drive you there, as He must. I have now learned that you cannot reach this point of exhaustion of your own volition to where you give up on your own. God has to drive you to it. He has to create the conditions of your “drowning” so that you wear yourself out and finally give up. You can't do even this.You can't even come to full surrender on your own no matter how much you think you can or have. All you can do is tell God you're willing, ask Him to do it, and then brace yourself. Don't say I didn't warn you.

I know I've reached the point where I know I can do nothing, absolutely nothing. It's actually kind of funny to see these words as I write them and know that they're true and not just some kind of spiritual hubris. I also know that I can't even keep up in prayer for all the things which need to be done which I can't do. Most days, the prayer which forms in my mind most often is “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner,” or just, “God have mercy.”

There's a certain resentment that builds with this exhaustion. There's a certain bitterness which creeps in. But I know that this bitterness is a fruit of the false prosperity teaching which had infiltrated the beliefs and practices of the Christianity of my youth. It was never so explicit as such, but there was still the idea that if you had chosen to serve the Lord that somehow you would be well taken care of and lead a somewhat middle-class life with good employment. I know better than that now. I've known better than that for a while. But it has also allowed me to identify this lingering lie which lay buried in the back of my mind. Somehow I had expected things to resolve into “better” circumstances than these. But this is not what Jesus taught, nor told us to expect.

It is a fascinating feeling, this calmness of exhaustion. There is an odd sort of peace about it, like accepting and waiting for death. Which, I know, is the whole point of God driving me to it. Acknowledging and accepting my death with Him. I can do so of my own volition a thousand times over, but it doesn't really happen until I am driven to it.

As a final thought on this subject, this is where we all must be driven if we are to be disciples of Jesus Christ. We must all individually be driven to this exhaustion where we accept our death calmly. It is then, and only then, that we stop fighting for our own selves and with our own selves.It is only then that pride and self-esteem cease; when avarice loses its hold on us; and when our facing Him in judgment never leaves our mind's eye.

This exhaustion is a necessary step in the path of Jesus Christ, but it is one which will leave you permanently scarred, and and a step from which you can never recover.