Standing firm

What is possibly common between the battlefront, behind the prison wall, and facing the executioner's axe? Nothing. Not so quickly!

The late Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat who was assassinated on October 6, 1981 famously said there are three places a man comes face to face with himself, at the battlefront, as shells are landing, loud bangs all around, and the sound of bullets passing, when a man is locked up behind bars without any hope of coming out, and when a man faces the executioner's axe.

I have never been to war. I have never been locked up and I have never faced the executioner's axe. However, I have come face to face with myself at another battlefront, been locked up in another prison, and faced the executioner's axe in the spiritual realm. I count myself fortunate to be alive today and to claim a personal salvation that cannot be taken from me. This is the subject I dwell on in this memo: coming face to face with myself and the change in my life.

At many points along my path of growing up, I faced myself in small ways, what I might call minor encounters of self. The time I went for a burial, while listening to the raw emotions of mourners, and hearing the message of the preacher by the grave side. The visualization of a dead body in a casket enhanced the immediacy of self-experience. Seeing a body whose essential self was departed spoke deeply to my innermost being, the mystery of death as a harbinger of many tales to the soul.

What it really means to come face-to-face with myself

To come face-to-face with myself means entering a moment in time when I am deeply aware of my short-comings and my need for someone reliable, bigger, stronger, able, and willing to help me. It might also be described as seeing the person I truly am in what might be a mirror of sorts. Deep inside my inner person this is a moment of conflict when the tectonic plates of my being shift and energy is transferred all over the place causing physical, emotional, and spiritual disequilibrium within my being.

Sometimes the help I need is to last for a short time only, and other times I need big help to sustain me through this life and into eternity. Coming to my senses or coming to myself means more or less the same thing. It is a moment of possibilities and decisions. It is also the opportune time to make life decisions.

I am often aware of the good-will that surrounds me. I am conscious of good men and women around me on whom I can call when I am in need. I am also aware of men's limitations and unwillingness if not inability to stand with me for prolonged periods. The minuscule shifts are not always what I need. The big shift is what I often need.

The big one

Life can thrust us into the middle of the ring where the spotlight falls squarely upon us: at the battle-front, when incarcerated, dying on the hospital bed, or on the execution board. It matters less where it happens, the effect is the same. The place was a classroom. The chains were spiritual bondage, the executioner was a man standing firm on His word and my moment had arrived. I was at the altar and the executioner's axe was raised high in readiness to strike. When the axe fell, it tore the chains off, leaving none to bind me.

I do not always know what I need although I can always tell you what I want and how I want it to look like. That is how it was that 24th day of October 1979 when I came face to face with myself. The surprise is that when I came face to face with myself I was confronted with my need. Along with my need all my wants would be satisfied. Perhaps that explains the significance of the last wishes of a dying man. Many things in life are important, but only one thing is really necessary, and the dying man knows what that is for himself. In that moment I realized I needed a personal savior. He had to be concerned for me, able, willing to help and remain with me to see me through many trials along the way.

When a man comes face to face with self, something happens. There is a paradigm shift in the deep inner self. Part of this is because our nature is deeply flawed. Body, soul, and spirit, the figurative crust, mantle, and inner core of our nature are not in perfect harmony, neither are they totally synchronized. From time to time seismic shifts happen and energy flows throughout the system causing us discomfort and disequilibrium. We, in turn, do everything we can to reach and maintain equilibrium. Perfection on earth is a fallacy. However, resolving the crisis of self harmonizes the system and synchronizes the flow of energy so that it is no longer disruptive and instead becomes positively productive. Perfection through God's Righteousness is not a fallacy. We become perfect in Him.

The biggest question any man can ever face alive is Will you accept Jesus as your personal Savior and Lord? Every other conflict is subordinate. Only when we truly know Jesus can we know how to resolve all other conflicts we shall find ourselves in.

How do we come face to face with ourselves? Is this something desirable?

Looking in the mirror

When I stand in front of my mirror I see my image. I do not in reality come face-to-face with myself. There are two mirrors spoken of in existence. The mirror on the wall and the mirror of God's word. The mirror of God's word is different and truly helps us to face ourselves. However, to be able to use it requires skill and knowledge only gained through experience of the One who gave it to man in the first place. So, I will skip the Word of God for another moment in our discourse.

I walked into the house of mirrors in South London many years ago. There were large and small mirrors, mirrors that distorted my image to look short and fat, and a mirror that made me look weird by twisting parts of my face. We have to be very careful the mirror we use; only the Word of God tells us the absolute truth about ourselves. Other mirrors can make us appear more handsome or ugly than we really are.

Beware the picture about yourself. The enemy will take a picture of you, photo-shop it until it is perfectly what you want to see and then tell you that is who you are. God's Word is different. He tells us who we really are.

Conflict

Conflict is the child of many forces within our human flaws; it works within our innermost being bringing us the possibility of facing ourselves. I say possibility because two additional elements are necessary to complete the requirements to face ourselves, sobriety and honesty. We must be sober and honest to ourselves to fully grasp and acknowledge our poor state in a conflict of the inner being.

We must be sober and intentional to grasp the true state of our fallen nature and the help available to pull us through.

Daily conflicts within ourselves can help us keep on course. I speak to those who have resolved the biggest conflict of them all. It is far too easy to take a new trajectory by a shift of the compass within. All we have to do is ignore the promptings of the inner conflicts.

The Word of God

This is the only Book in the world that reads our minds and tells us who we truly are. By devoting time to study the Word of God we are putting ourselves where we can continually grow in knowledge and wisdom by facing ourselves daily. Not only does the Word show us who we are, it shows us what is possible, Who God is, and what He can do for us.

Someone once said, The journey of a thousand miles starts out with a single step. So also it is with learning to walk with the Living God. We have to take one day at a time; the first step, and then the next, and soon we learn to run. We learn to know who really loves us.

The story of the young man in Luke 15 is a perfect example in mind. In verse 17 of this amazing story, Jesus told the listeners, the young man who went away from home to a strange land finally "came to himself" or to his senses. When that happened, he formed a strategy and made a plan to return home.

Henri J.M. Nouwen in his book the Return of the prodigal son has this to say, "I am a prodigal son every time I search for unconditional love where it cannot be found. As long as I keep running about asking, "do you love me? Do you really love me" I give all power to the voices of the world and put myself in bondage because the world is filled with "ifs." It says, "Yes, I love you if you are good looking, intelligent, and wealthy. I love you if you have a good education, job, and good connections. These 'ifs' enslave me. p 38-39

The purpose of this inner conflict is to bring us into a more perfect harmony with our Creator's will for us.