I need Jesus. I need so much of him. Help me lord, to be more like you and less of me.
The Christian life—our growth in Christ—is nothing other than the lifelong deconstruction of what we naturally think and assume and the reconstruction of truth through the Bible. The Bible reeducates us. The Bible makes sages out of fools. It corrects us. But the Bible not only corrects us; it also oxygenates us. We need a Bible not only because we are wrong in our minds but also because we are empty in our souls.
We consign ourselves to plateaued growth in Christ if we yield to pride and fear and hide our sins. We grow as we own up to being real sinners, not theoretical sinners. All of us, as Christians, acknowledge generally that we are sinners. Rarer is the Christian who opens up to another about exactly how he or she is a sinner. But in this honesty, life blossoms. Walking in the light is killing the preening and parading, the mask-wearing, the veneer, the keeping up of appearances. It is collapsing into transparency.
Closed vents can’t be cleaned, full cups can’t be filled, and the Spirit does not enter where we are quietly operating out of self-dependence. But the distraught, the empty, the pleading, the self-despairing, those tired of paying the tax of obedience to God and trying to live on what’s left over—theirs are hearts irresistible to the humble Holy Spirit.
- Dane C. Ortlund - Deeper
