3 Ways ‘I Can’t’ Means Victory, Not Failure

I think it’s the nature of the Christian life to go through cycles such as the following: Things are going pretty well. And then through a whole series of circumstances in which we feel thrown against the rocks. We thought we could do something, but we can’t. All of our efforts at self-will and continued perseverance feel like falling apart, and we cry out to God. “Help! I can’t!”

Nearing the Kingdom

You see, I think God actually intentionally puts us in circumstances where we are over our heads, where we can’t do it. And we need God’s help to be able to enter what the circumstances ask of us. 

That has certainly been my experience. During this season of the coronavirus pandemic, I continue to be thrown against the rocks of my efforts to be patient, to be somehow magnanimous and generous. Right now, trying to just get a good night’s sleep can be an extraordinary challenge. I wake up thinking about things, and I believe God’s hand is in it, because he is using this to draw us, if we will listen, even more deeply into himself. 

The wonderful line that Jesus says to the scribe: “You are not far from the kingdom of God” (Mark 12:34b) was not a criticism of his analysis; his analysis (read it in Mark 12:28-34) was perfect. His words, in fact, mark the center of what it means to live a godly life: “to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,’ and ‘to love one’s neighbor as oneself.’”

But these words are still more challenging than anything I can ever imagine. And the scripture quoted here assumes the fact that we have been claimed. Did you notice: Which God? Our God. “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Mark 12:29a).

Relying on Mercy

In other words, this acclamation is the declaration of a relationship. God’s covenantal love has already and entirely claimed us for his own. And because of the fact that we have been claimed by him without reservation, because we have entered into a covenant with him, we can enter a relationship that speaks of loving him and asks nothing less than all of our love. And this involves not just the religious part of us, or among many other claims, but all sorts of loves.

I think the distance between not being “not far from the kingdom of God” and actually entering the kingdom is the experience of coming to face the fact that I cannot do what is being asked of me. And that all I can do is rely on God’s mercy.

And that in fact, is what generates even a greater sense of love, because I know I don’t deserve it. I come to God as a pauper, full of incompleteness and broken promises, inadequate resolution, failure – even at my very best – to do all that is being asked of me. 

And yet, because I know all those places of real sadness, conviction and shame are in fact stopped at the door of the blood of his cross, and I am invited in, clean and cleansed, because of what Jesus has done, does more to inspire my heart to love than anything else I know. 

I know that my relationship with Christ is entirely based on his undeserved love. I was claimed by him before I ever knew him or acknowledged him. He chose to enter a covenant with me; he took the initiative to invite me in. And that is the thing that dislodges in me the resentment, the judgmentalism, that inhibits my capacity to be able to love and care for other people. 

You see, I can’t love other people; I can’t “love my neighbor as myself,” unless I am known as one who is loved by God, unless that love has found its way into the deep, deep crevices of my heart. Without that love, without the lubrication of the Holy Spirit, the gears grow rusty, the resentment grows. Without that love, I experience my own anger and frustration more than I can practice any act of kindness, much less sacrificial love.

Longing for God

And so it is in all of that: the expression of my own inadequacy, the joy of being forgiven and received, that softens my heart to the needs of other people in a way that otherwise would not be possible, at least not for me. There may be those magnanimous souls who without the gospel know how to love well, but I am not one. I need all the grace and mercy I can get to have the power to put my needs on the shelf. I need that grace and mercy to begin to live and give, even at the sacrifice of what I would desire most, except in my heart of hearts, what I desire most is, in fact, to be faithful.

Of course, I’d love to be faithful and still get everything I want. But God hears the cry of our hearts, and he knows there is in a hunger and a longing for him, that all of the things we desire can never satisfy. And he wants us to be channels of the love he pours into us, the love that gives us the capacity to see what we would have otherwise never seen.

When my needs come first, I see other people through the lens of how they may or may not meet my needs. And that actually is the heart of racism. 

I need to receive first from my Lord and Savior, that I may live well and love well. 

Always.

Do you feel like telling God, “I can’t!” Why? Share this blog and your response on Twitter. Please include my username, @revgregbrewer. 

(This post is an adaption of Bishop Brewer’s sermon for June 4, 2020, in the chapel of the Diocese of Central Florida in Orlando.) 

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.