There’s a song that’s pretty much always on my Spotify playlist by This Beautiful Republic called My God. Here’s the lyrics:
I’m losing contact forgetting what is real
Able to touch but not able to feel
It’s easier to shut out everyone
I’m chasing after my newest distraction to escape it all
My God, oh, my God, what have I become?
The self-addicted one
My God, oh, my God, You never failed me
You’re what I need
So often I’m the sleeping prayer
More often I’m the weeping betrayer
Sometimes I play the martyr, become the traitor
The humbled sinner has never been a role I knew to play
My God, oh, my God, what have I become?
The self-addicted one
My God, oh, my God, You never failed me
You’re what I need
Treason, a pound of flesh is the debt
Leaving a crippled man
I’ll give You all I have left
A straining outstretched hand
Is it enough? Is it enough?
Reach down, take me back, take me back
My God, oh, my God, what have I become?
The self-addicted one
My God, oh, my God, You never failed me
You’re what I need
My God, oh, my God
(My God, oh, my God)
My God, oh, my God
I’ll give You all I have left
A straining outstretched hand
Recently, I’ve been struggling. It seems like that battle with depression is making it’s comeback. I tend to have feelings of worthlessness, defeat, failure. I feel like I just can’t do anything right or make anyone happy. Everything I touch seems to fall apart. In my mind, I know they’re lies that the enemy tries to attack me with. I know those things aren’t really true. But my heart has a hard time believing that.
I’ll do good for several months and then there just seems to be a series of events or conversations that kind of bring it all back. It starts out so subtly and begins to build and invade my thoughts so slowly that I hardly notice that my mind seems to drift towards those feelings whenever something happens. It starts out like the gently, barely perceptible twinkling of a star in the night sky and soon it’s like that star went supernova, so close that all I can see are the flames reaching toward me, faster than I can run away.
I’ve always been a pretty quiet person, never really having many friends. I tend to stick to myself and have a few people around me that I care about, but I tend to not reach out to any of them before that star goes super nova. Like the lyrics say “I’m losing contact forgetting what is real. Able to touch but not able to feel. It’s easier to shut out everyone. I’m chasing after my newest distraction to escape it all.” I surround myself with my fortress of solitude and escape in my mind to things I’d love to do or see. I get lost in a fantasy of being a millionaire or being able to pursue a career of my dreams and try to shut out the world.
I always get to a point where I know that I’m about to break. For the past couple of months, I’ve had a weird medical thing going on. After going to the ER and doing some tests, it’s still unclear what’s going on. I get very hot, extremely lightheaded and so weak that I can’t speak. It happened one Sunday evening. My wife and son were in the living room watching Mr. Bean and I was in the bedroom, only 20 feet away. I went to the room to check my blood pressure because I was feeling “off” and it hit. I laid down in bed before I lost the ability to control what was going on and hit the floor or dresser. I laid there, only feet from my family and couldn’t call out to my wife for help. I couldn’t call out to her to come and sit with me and be there to comfort me while I fought through whatever was going on.
That’s what it’s like for me when things are getting tough emotionally. I desperately want to call out. I desperately want someone to hold me and tell me that I’m loved and pray with me. To have someone reach out and check in every few days. I NEED to call out, but at that point, I’ve trapped myself so deep inside of myself that I don’t even know how anymore.
Getting caught in these lies and falling ever deeper into the hole they dig for me, I unintentionally distance myself from God. I don’t pray as much or with as much conviction. I feel as though God couldn’t love me, so why bother putting in the effort. I forget that He is there with me through those dark moments and don’t turn to Him until I bottom out and scream “My God, oh, my God, what have I become?” I find myself turning my back because how could I be here, feeling this way again when I’ve given myself over to Jesus. I get desperate and instead of keeping my eyes on Jesus, I only see the storm around me, like Peter stepping out into the water to walk to Jesus. When He focused on Jesus, he was fine. As soon as his eyes shifted away from Jesus towards the world around Him, he began to sink. “‘Lord, if it’s you,’ Peter answered him, ‘command me to come to you on the water.’ ‘He said, Come.’ And climbing out of the boat, Peter started walking on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the strength of the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, ‘Lord, save me!'” (Matt. 14: 28-30).
And I sink like a stone tossed in the water. Many times, I feel like Peter throughout the Gospels. Emotionally charged, not really thinking as much as he should. Being reactive. Struggling to take what Jesus was teaching him to heart and apply it to himself. Struggling to have a resolute faith when things were difficult. Even denying Jesus, someone he loved dearly.
But that very next verse says “Immediately Jesus reached out His hand, caught hold of him, and said to him ‘You of little faith, why do you doubt?'” (Matt. 24:31). Jesus called Peter to follow Him towards something that Peter would have previously thought was impossible and gave him the power to do it, but Peter saw the world around him, saw the storm and lost sight of his faith in Jesus. But Jesus didn’t give up on him and instead, reached out to save him from his unbelief. Even when Peter forgot his faith, Jesus was there to save him in the midst of the storm that surrounded him.
I often forget about this passage when things are challenging. I lose sight of Jesus in the storm of life, I sometimes go so far as to completely stop seeking out a relationship, and yet He’s there, reaching His hand out for me, just waiting for me to reach out and take it so He can deliver me from my unbelief. He hasn’t forgotten me. He doesn’t think that I’m a failure. He chose to create me, He chose to die to save me. He chooses to reach out for my hand every day as I falter on my journey through faith.
And so I say “My God, oh, My God, I’ll give you all I have left, a straining outreached hand!”
Journey Through Faith 