Candleman, upon reading my post Hisstory or Mystory? as well as my testimony, left the following comment. I’ll reproduce it in full because he raises an important and valuable point.

I appreciate the sincerity of your posts and your testimony. I once strived to live the way you mention in this post:

“I am either living the life that God desires and am being conformed to the image of Jesus Christ – which is His-story – or I am living for myself and conforming to the world – which is my-story.

So which will it be, Hisstory or mystory? It is a choice I make every minute of every day of my life.”

I can appreciate your desire to live like this, however, it almost drove me crazy. How do you do this every minute of everyday? I found that when I did this, I questioned everything I did through out the day. Did I loose my desire “to be confirmed to the image of Jesus Christ when I dwelled on a inappropriate thought for too long, watched TV, listened to the radio; read a magazine or book that was not about deepening my relationship with Christ? Did I become more spiritual by not watching certain TV shows, not listen to any secular music? How does one do this without becoming a legalistic, judgmental, hell fire and brimstone type?

Are you conforming to the world when you listen to Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendricks, and Led Zeppelin as you state in your blogger profile? (This is a serious question and I am not trying to be judgmental at all on your music tastes.)

This is my struggle. Such that for a great while I have given up on trying to indulge myself in some self absorbed, constant scrutiny of my walk with Christ. The problem with that is after a few years of that, a spiritual wasteland fog sets in.

I have settled for something a little simpler. I am a loving, faithful husband to my wife, a loving and caring father to my four children; that has been saved by my belief that Jesus shed His blood on a cross to save me from my sins..past..present and future. I love the new church we are attending that is helping to restore my faith and be used of God in ministries there.

Trying to conform to Jesus every single minute of every day and not conform to anything in this world is just something I can’t grasp right now.

As I said above, Candleman is on to something. I was referring to something quite different but he, nevertheless, is describing something that is quite prevalent for many, many Christians.

What I was referring to was the core of my being where the decision is made to follow Christ daily and die to whatever silly ambitions or desires I might think are more important. It’s not about choosing to do right every second; it’s about choosing to follow through with what I’ve already decided to do.

Candleman, however, is talking about a miserable way of living. I know because, like Candleman, I used to be there.

Probably because it fit with my personality at the time, I confused obsessing about God with being filled with the Spirit and abiding in Christ. Almost every thought I had was painfully and rigorously scrutinized, examined under an unbiblical, neurotic microscope to see if or how much sin was involved. It was about “doing it right” all the time. I literally lived by the letter of the law and watched myself constantly, as though a mere observer of a tortured, failing lifestyle. I was consumed with my own “holiness,” not with Him who had made me holy (forensically, for all you doctrinal types reading this).

I was miserable; worse, I made my wife miserable, too.

I thought that this was what the Christian life was supposed to be all about: a constant, unrelenting preoccupation with God and His word. I lost interest in almost everything that had been in my life prior to my conversion. (In my case, this was not all bad.) I was quickly bored with any conversation that did not focus on Christ and impatient with Christians who were interested in “worldly” things like sports, movies, literature, music, dancing, or having fun in general.

I was suffering and insufferable.

It wasn’t until I was in the middle of seminary that I finally broke. Not a psychotic break, but a spiritual one. I remember sitting in the living room of our house in Colorado and saying to God,

“I quit! You said that Your Spirit would live in me and produce Christ in me. Well, I’m through trying to do it. God, it’s time for You to do it or not. I’m done!”

And I did quit. I quit reading my Bible except when classes required it, stopped having compulsive “quiet times” (chapter and verse for that, please?), and let my mind focus on what was in front of me for the sake of what was in front of me. No looking for deeper meanings or “seeing” God or wondering what God was trying to teach me (like the Christian life is just a curriculum to educate me).

Guess what happened.

Well, I began swearing again (well, openly instead of just under my breath – like spiritual Christians do), drinking too much at times, and looking (leering?) a bit too long at some of the attractive ladies on the Front Range. I blew off chapel on a regular basis and, if I felt like watching a movie or playing golf or going skiing, I blew off class, too. I had been living the Christian life in my own flesh, restraining myself, and had no concept or familiarity with real Christian experience. So, when I quit my obsessive-compulsive spirituality, there was a bit of a lag before I began to learn what the spiritual life was really all about.

But that gradually (over the course of a few weeks) started to change, slowly at first and then with more and more momentum. I began to think of myself as an Old Testament saint, one who didn’t have a pocket Torah to carry around and have devotions all the time. I walked with God, I felt, but it was a walk and not an investigation of every tiny little aspect of my life. I relaxed and sort of began leaning into God. I was Adam in the Garden, Enoch after Methusaleh was born.

(God would deal with the grandiose narcissism later.)

The temptations began to lose their appeal – they’re really not as much fun if you give yourself permission to indulge in them – and I began to see things from God’s perspective without even trying to. I picked up my Bible again and started reading just for pleasure. I enjoyed Christ again and looked forward to spending another day with Him. My wife smiled at me again.

In His grace, God weaned me from my OCS and taught me that there is a profound difference between thinking about Him and walking with Him. It’s important, of course, to think correctly about God. But that’s just a means to an end: the end is to know more about Him so that when you spend time with Him, you enjoy Him more.

I still struggle from time to time with different things but I don’t get upset or beat myself up when I fall or fail. I apologize to God, thank Him, and get back on the path of righteousness. His path, not mine.

Sometimes, as I’m getting up, it’s almost as though He has reached down to give me His hand. Which is what any father would do for a son who has stumbled and now wants to get going again. And I go about the business of living life.


2 Cor 1:13