condemning heart

Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. (1 John 3:18-20)
All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away. (Isaiah 64:6)

I was just reading an article by a guy who said his life was like a tennis match. It went back and forth from I am fine to I am a rank sinner.

That is how I feel and have felt much of my life.

I was talking to someone the other day who has a very poor self-image. The person has had a lot of problems in life and it just gave them no real way to look at themselves positively.

I am the same way, although no one would know it to look at me. I have always had a very confident demeanor. Some have even called me arrogant, although he they made the attempt to know me they would never have said that.

I suppose I had confidence in what I could do much of the time, but I will have to admit that the confidence could be eliminated easily. In fact, in the past few years, I have come to the point that I feel that confidence ebbing away daily.

Things that I used to do easily, I can either no longer do them or they have been maligned by others to the point that they are in danger of being gone.

Add to that the overall life tiredness I have and it makes for a problem.

I know God loves me and has plans for me. He has told me so. Yet I am in a hard situation after a long life of service to him. On the one hand, my heart condemns me.

“If you were a better person, you would do better.” “If you were a better person, God would love you more.” Stupidity like that.

And it seems that everything I do, I can find reasons for it and reasons to deny that it is any good. The good things become filthy rags, not necessarily because they are in comparison to God and his glory, but because I have decided they are.

I see rejection. I just left a denomination in which I was soundly rejected. I believe that it was far more stylistic rejection than anything else. I did not fit the mold of an Assembly of God preacher and was unwilling to put on that idea.

My own church many times refuses to see my call or work while churches around are supportive of us and can see it. I suppose that is because when they are paying your salary, they expect different things from you.

And then I see acceptance. I look at the way some perceive me and tell me that they can see the call on my life. The Foursquare Church just finished ordaining me. In that ordination ceremony, I was told publicly that the call could be seen on my life. And I believe that I have been called, and also that I have not been released from that call.

But I see myself as a sinful man, and a failure before the throne of God. I look at what I have accomplished in the past and I look at where I am right now and they do not go together. I cannot see the hand of God in it.

And it does not help when someone tells me that the Foursquare Church made a mistake and that I am a fake.

But – again but – I know that the call in my life is real. If God is real, and if he is in control – and I have to believe he is – and if I am trying my best to remain in his will. I am where he wants me to be. I can do nothing else than what I am doing.

Just thinking. I sure am glad 1 John 3:18-20 is in the Bible. My heart is the most self-condemning heart I know of.