Resistance is Futile

I try to fight stuff.  I do.  Sometimes I win, but often I don’t.  But I was thinking about it, and it seemed to me that the times I don’t are the times my focus is not in the right place.  Kind of like focusing too much on the problem, and not enough on the solution.

An example would be the problem I mentioned a while back about food, or my diet.  However you want to say it.  What I would do would be to focus on the food itself.  What I could have.  What I could not, or should not have.  And eventually, what I could not have would take the place of what I could in my thinking. 

I would stress out and obsess about it, but I would not think about what would actually help.  

Making Jesus the focus, rather than trying to lean on my own strength–or weakness, depending on how you look at it.  I wonder now how much less difficult it would have been to “trust in the Lord, and lean not on my own understanding.”

My tendency is to try and fight battles like that on my own.  I lose them.

Or maybe lust could be the problem.  If you’re struggling with pornography, for example.  Or maybe, as a believer, you’re trying to adhere to biblical abstinence (and that works the same for a man or woman, I believe).   Or it could be alcohol, or drugs.  These things, especially, I think people are inclined to try and fight on their own.

Not surprising, really.  These things are embarrassing.  Lacking self-control is embarrassing.  And really, it should be easy to not….indulge, shouldn’t it?  In whatever the vice, whatever the sin.

But it isn’t easy at all.

It’s tough.  And since I always try and fight these fights alone, it’s just that much tougher.  I focus on the battle.  I focus on the problem.  I miss the solution.  I think a lot of people do.

We miss God in all of it.

I think the solution is that we need to look a little higher than the earth, and that often isn’t the case at all. We need to look beyond our stomachs, or thirsts, or “needs” for chemicals, or our libidos.

We need to look beyond ourselves for answers.

We need to look to God first.

To God.

Not that it will make everything easy, because it won’t.  But if we have a loftier focus than the earth, if we

Turn our eyes upon Jesus

then the things of earth really will grow strangely dim, or at least dimmer.

And we’ll be able to see. 

And be helped.

And fight.

And win.