“The purpose of an inside look is to promote [a] spiritual depth. The more deeply we sense our thirst, the more passionately we’ll pursue water. And the more clearly we recognize how we dig our own wells in search of water, the more fully we can repent of our self-sufficiency and turn to God in obedient trust. As we learn to live in confidence that the deepest concerns of our soul are in good hands, both the shame we feel because of our unworthiness and the terror we have one day facing exposure and rejection will lose their power to control us…
New believers change in their conscious direction. Growing believers learn to love by abandoning their self-protection. Mature believers begin to grasp the meaning of Paul’s words, ‘For to me, to live is Christ,’ as they shift the central direction of their very being toward God…
When we make a commitment to integrity and openness, and inside look will expose previously hidden disappointments that provoke a frightening level of rage at those who hurt us. When we admit the pain of disappointment and the rage of betrayal, we can then see how our style of relating has been shaped by a stubborn commitment to avoid feeling the pain and, in many cases, expressing the rage.
At the point where we recognize self-protective relational patterns as a defense against pain, an inside look has done important work. It has made possible a deeper level of repentance. Until we reach that point, repentance is little more than an admission of wrongdoing followed by a concerted effort to do better.
When we fully understand our disappointed thirst and self-protective patterns, repentance can involve a deeper shift in our understanding of how life is to be lived and how we miss the mark…
The most profound level of change possible before Heaven requires and inside look at two hard-to-grasp realities:
1. Since the Fall, every man struggles to regard himself as fully male and every woman struggles to regard herself as fully female;
and
2. Life between the fall of man and the coming of Christ is so overwhelmingly sad that only our hope in Christ can preserve us from insanity or suicide…”
Inside Out, pgs. 202, 204, 208
More on those last two soon! I promise we’re getting close to the end of all the quotes. And I have some personal stuff I’m learning I want to share.
Getting there, getting there.