My head’s underwater, and I can’t breathe…
Pull me up because I’m too deep
I’m looking for a sign…
Now I see a shining light…
Oh, won’t somebody come and set me free…
Set me free…
Feeling broken and I’m worn out…
I’ve got nowhere left to go now…
I’ve been trying to make it right…
Don’t care what I left behind…
Oh, won’t somebody come and set me free…
(Jesus), set me free… 1
Jesus said that his main purpose was to set the captives free… Luke 4:18, Isaiah 61:1
Why is life so hard?
They say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Some of us are stubborn. Even hard-headed, unwilling to budge. We are even so defiant that it sometimes takes years of being buffeted until we finally realize that our stubborn life isn’t working, we aren’t going anywhere, and we haven’t gone anywhere in a long time. We keep doing the same thing over and over, and we are still not getting it. We need something else, but what?
This was me.
Setting us free means we need to change… And for some of us, that is a very difficult thing because we think that we are right all the time. And when I say we think we are right, I mean we are stubborn about it.
Over time, I finally stopped and said, OK, I am tired of kicking against the pricks. 45 years later… I started looking at it from His perspective instead of mine, and it hasn’t been easy. This was a new way to think. It was a new way of treating those around me. It was a new viewpoint. It was trying to see things as He sees them. It’s thinking as he thinks. It’s treating others the way that he treats them, and learning to have the expanded viewpoint that He has. It meant being patient, like he has been patient with me. It’s to overcome and to be like God.
We are too selfish and inward-thinking. ME…ME…ME… Always ME! We need to think “US” instead! “US” means our neighbor, our instigator, or even our bully. Treating others, whether they have been good to us or not, as ourselves. Not being unwise, but being full of kindness. Even Jesus, when he was met by the traitor Iscariot, called him “Friend.”
Life is a hard schoolmaster… It’s designed to knock the rough edges off us.
God starts by putting us into a rock tumbler. Sometimes we sit in that tumbler for years because we are so hard-headed. Eventually, God comes around to check on our progress…have we been smoothed out or not? Some people come out of the tumbler and don’t look like anything has changed, so we get put back in for another round.
Over time, if we allow it, we can become more refined, with fewer rough edges and those rough parts smoothed out.
The first part of being tumbled is finally setting foot in a church with a good pastor. We quit complaining about religion and go because we want to “feel” the spirit and hear the good word of God for ourselves. Not because we are supposed to go. This is knocking off some of the rough edges…
The next part of being tumbled is to finally get us to open the scriptures and read a little bit each day. This too knocks off another rough edge of ours…
Then the next part of tumbling is to finally get our stubborn hearts to kneel down and say a simple prayer. I understand that for some of us, this is foreign, and it might even be hard to just do it… But persevere! This will knock off a lot of rough edges at once.
These 3 things are part of letting go of our stubbornness. These things need to be knocked out of our hard heads. The earlier we learn things, the better life will be, and it will change us for the better.
If we make no progress, then God comes back and puts us into the tumbler for another round to check on our progress later… How many times do we need to keep going into the tumbler, time and time again, before we finally say, “Ok, Lord, I’m done fighting?”
Can I just say that after 50 years, I was getting tired of being put back into the rock tumbler… This reminds me of the parable in which the lord of the vineyard kept coming back to the tree to see if there was any fruit on it. He was patient, but then it finally came a time when he told his servant to pluck up the tree so that it no longer cumbered the ground.
If we never change, then God will eventually toss us out and place other rocks into that tumbler so that He gets only the best stones in the end time.
God wants to take our roughness and smooth it out. He then wants to polish us and make us into something valuable. He does this by refining us a little at a time as we will.
Once the rough edges on the outside are gone, He begins to work on the impurities inside. You cannot have a perfect stone without removing all its impurities.
He is seeking to purify us. He wants us to be pure like He is.
Then he cuts sections off from us that hold us back. This could be bad relationships, crappy friends who are not real friends… splitting them off, as they do not add to our greatness but end up taking away instead.
This reshapes us. It even makes us appear different than before.
Next comes the high gloss polish. It allows the inward side of us to show up on the outside, where we become transparent. Nothing is hidden or secret anymore. He shows us our imperfections and helps us to be perfect.
There is an inherent beauty that forms after we have gone through this process. We become a candle set on a hill where everyone can see its light, and it sparkles with flawless purity for all to see.
You see, Jesus is the author and finisher of our faith. If we let him, our value will grow until we become priceless… and our appearance of what was before will change into what we have become now…and we will shine bright like the sun.
We thought we were just being formed into a beautiful-looking stone, but he is fashioning us into a flawless gem.
C. S. Lewis described it thus:” Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing, so you are not surprised. But presently, he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of — throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage, but He is building a palace.”
Maybe we don’t see ourselves for what we truly are. We’ve been told we’re not good enough. Too stupid to amount to anything… Maybe we’ve been told that we were ugly or too fat. But God sees through all of this…
Maybe we’ve even had others belittle us in front of our peers or behind our backs. But God looks at us and sees something much, much more. Indeed, we may start as a little cottage, but God wants to make us a palace fit for a King.
1 Lyrics by: Jake Oliver Warren, Dana Elizabeth Kelson