The problem is that many people are dealing with something so diametrically opposed to God's good pleasure for us that someone must overcome the hopelessness that can never entertain the hope of such a prayer.
In my experience, the most common diagnosis of the inner being of church-going people is that, at the center of their souls, they believe they are worthless. They have had so many experiences affirm this belief that they now feel hopeless of ever being of worth to anyone, including God. Because their worthless condition appears so hopeless, they live in constant fear that anyone will ever discover what they are really like inside because that will surely result in further rejection. This fear of rejection, and repeated confirmations of their hopelessly worthless condition, causes people to create a great variety of self-protective behaviors in the attempt to convince people to treat them with worth, to relate to them as though they truly had value after all.
Of course, the person knows that even the best relationships are nothing more than people attaching to their façade of pretence, so they can never feel they truly have worth, and they can never enjoy the security of relationships that will not reject them as soon as their secrets are exposed.
Paul uses his example to turn our hearts to the true hope of the soul. We can pray to God, who is Father over all his children (no matter how worthless and hopeless we feel), and ask him to strengthen us with power through his own Holy Spirit in our innermost beings. It does not matter how weak we are, or how worthless we perceive ourselves to be. Our hope does not lie in our sarky self-protection, or our fear of exposure, or our soul-numbing hopelessness, or our all-consuming worthlessness. Our hope lies in our heavenly Father, who wants us to turn to him in faith for the powerful strengthening of our inner being.
What does God desire for us as
he works in us both to will and to work for his good pleasure?[1] That
we would know what it feels like for Jesus Christ to actually dwell in our
hearts through faith, replacing the worthlessness that has been controlling us
from the inside for far too long. As Jesus dwells in our hearts by the Holy
Spirit we discover that we are rooted and grounded in love long before we even
wonder if such a thing is possible.
With this abiding presence of Jesus Christ in our souls, we begin
to have the strength to comprehend the breadth and length and height and depth
of the love of Jesus Christ. We find that we have a growing sense of awe and
wonder that acknowledges that God loves us because he is love. As our
comprehension of the infinite and eternal love of Jesus Christ fills us,
we come to know the love of Christ by experience. We feel this divine
transformation as the hopeless worthlessness dissipates and the wonderful love
of God fills and heals our hearts.
As God continues to strengthen us with his power through his Holy
Spirit in our inner beings, we begin to feel what it is like to have the
fullness of God fill us. We hear and pray the words of God and find that Jesus'
joy comes inside us, and our joy starts filling up our inner beings.[2]
Part of the good news in this
is that it doesn't matter how hopeless we feel about ourselves, or anything we
are facing, God teaches us how to pray for the transforming strength of his
Holy Spirit. If we will pray, God will answer, and we will change.
When we come to God to be transformed through the renewal of our minds, we must bring to him the honesty to admit what is going on inside us. Our faith is not in ourselves, so we can admit how poorly we are doing. Our faith is in God, so we can meditate on how well he is doing at all times. He is able to do immeasurably more than all we can ask, think, or imagine (especially from inner beings that have long felt hopelessly worthless), so let us ask for what he has already revealed to be his will.
"And this is the confidence that we have toward him,
that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us."
(I John 5:14)
© 2015 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517,
Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted,
Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English
Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good
News Publishers.)
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