Cease Striving! Prt. 2: Trying Too Hard

Despite my best efforts, I have always fallen far short of the ‘standard of excellence’ that somehow got lodged into my brain long ago…and as I tried so incredibly hard to be good, tried so incredibly hard to be successful, I have often been anything but.  The frustration and depression from failing to reach these unobtainable goals led me (while serving as a vocational minister) to go in a different direction and try and obtain a lasting peace, a lasting happiness….in Christ, ‘of course.’  Needless to say, I have tried so incredibly hard to be happy, to be peaceful, to be easy going, that of course I have failed at it miserably, time and time again…

  

Ironically, my 'best efforts' were always directed at winning my own 'self acceptance': I knew God loved and accepted me, yet I was not nearly as accepting and forgiving of "I" as God was(!)  How well-intentioned yet incredibly self-absorbed! And yet, even though I recognize my over-striving, even though I work hard to eliminate it, I only ‘strive to hard’ to eliminate ‘striving to hard’!  As Charles Brown would say at this point, “GOOD GRIEF”, man!  And better yet, not only do I continue to get caught in this battle of strife, I pray unceasingly that God will help and bless me in my strivings(!)

Thus I believe it no coincidence that I found the following in the 1992 preface to Dr. Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, easily one of the most profound books I have ever read:

Again and again I therefore admonish my students both in Europe and in America:  “Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it.  For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself.  Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success:  you have to let it happen by not caring about it.” (italics mine)

I am a living example that what Dr. Frankl is suggesting is spot-on: I have yet (after 20 years of ‘adult life’) to hit my targets of ‘success’ and ‘happiness.’  I have been so incredibly ‘unsuccessful’ in trying to be successful, so unhappy in trying to achieve happiness:  Honestly, what makes me think that I’ll eventually ‘hit’ these things in the future, if I only try a little bit harder?!?!

As Chrsitians, we can try too hard to be too good in order to please our own personal levels of self-acceptance, at the expense of having a dynamic and true relationship with Christ.  In order to eradicate this weakness, this futility, this running-in-circles, this self-absorbed trap that Satan lures us (and our good intentions) into, we must pray that God will help us learn how to simply be.  We must actually ask for God’s patience and instruction in teaching us how to think Christ-centered thoughts and stop measuring our self-centered efforts, as if happiness and peace are things that can be measured.  And honestly, what is success, really?

Again, Psalms 46.10: Cease Striving And Know That I Am God.  To follow that, meditate upon another verse in another Psalm, this time Psalm 37.7:

Be Still (Rest) before the Lord and wait patiently for him…

Or Psalm 62.1: “For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation” and verse 5: “For God alone my soul waits in silence, for my hope is from him.”

Please focus on truly being before God today and this week …and pray for me that I can someday learn to just be…content in and before Christ!

In Him,

Mark