Broken Down, Busted

God, you've had me in the wringer today. I feel like I have been broken to pieces and then it washes over me again in a more profound way over and over, hour by hour. Wretched am I. Weeping doesn't even cover it. I have allowed myself to be seduced by the enemy and my heart is broken because of my infidelity to you, oh God. My betrayal was to think more highly of myself and my agenda, than of you. To allow myself to be wooed into thinking that I actually have dominion over my own life, and then to add insult to injury, to allow the enemy to convince me that I have the aptitude to handle fire and not get burnt. HA! I have ignored you, Lord. To quote an appropriate song, "I have made you too small in my eyes. Oh Lord, forgive me. I have believed in a lie. Oh Lord, have mercy." As the realization of my own folly unfolds in my mind, the enemy whispers such biting messages of shame and recrimination in my ears, that I can hardly live with myself. Can hardly stand up straight for the pain of it. Wave after wave of shame and embarrassment wash over me as I contemplate the messages he plants in my mind with his vile tongue. "You are stupid, stupid, stupid!" he says with contempt. "You know better!" he says. "What were you thinking?" he says. One rejection message right after another. An all too familiar passage makes more sense to me today than ever before: "What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin." I see that in such technicolor right now. My flesh or "sinful nature" is a slave to sin even though my mind knows better. But I have made the mistake of allowing the enemy to seduce me into believing that I'm above that. Pride. Lord, when I start thinking that way, help me to remember how much pain I allowed the enemy to lure me into this afternoon. A warning that reminds me of my own weakness--my inability to be righteous in my own strength--so that your strength may be made perfect Lord. I realize with more illumination that if I don't reconcile myself to my own weakness, I am unable to draw from your perfect strength, even if it's right there waiting for me--and disaster awaits. How often do we ignore the little voice that says, "You're straying off the path...beware." Denial isn't just pretending that things are better than they are--it is denying you, oh Lord. I repent for taking matters into my own hands. I ask that you would restore me and even if it hurts like hell, please keep me humble. I can't believe I'm praying that because I know what it can mean. Peter nailed it though, "if not for you Lord, where would we turn?"