The Great Undoing

Yesterday when my husband and I were praying into the picture of Jesus doing a deep work in our hearts (with a garden fork!), he remembered a passage from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (part of the Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis). In it the boy Eustace had been transformed into a dragon by his greedy selfish thoughts, and was feeling lonely and desperate to change. Aslan came to him and led him to a large well, like a bath, and told dragon-Eustace to get undressed before stepping in. But although Eustace tried to shed his dragon skin he found that no matter how hard he tried, there were more layers underneath. He was beginning to despair when Aslan offered to do it for him. Eustace was so desperate he paid no regard to the pain and just submitted – at which point Aslan’s claws cut deep, deep into the dragon’s skin and peeled it all off, leaving Eustace tender and exposed – and back to his original self (only much more humble).

And what my husband and I instantly felt was that this is a perfect picture of where many of us – the whole Church in fact – find ourselves. Over the circumstances of the past year we have come to realise that we have been self-centred and greedy, indulging in religious practices to make ourselves feel good, while not caring anywhere near enough about the lost, and basically we have strayed very, very far from the vibrant, effective Church we were intended to be. This year God has allowed us to see how broken and selfish we have become, and I believe we have come to a place of repentance, acknowledging that we have to change.
But here’s the problem: we can’t change ourselves. Not a chance. We’ve tried. We’ve prayed, read our Bibles, fasted, pleaded, done warfare, spoken positive confessions, claimed 2 Chron 7:14… but it’s all been as effective as Eustace trying to scratch a layer of skin off: if we have made any change at all it has been only at surface level. Meanwhile the depth of our unbelief and religion go so much deeper than we can possibly realise.
I do believe we are genuine in our prayers and repentance – at least, we believe we mean what we pray. But I also believe our understanding is far too shallow; we still think the solution to revival lies in us doing more (prayer/ fasting/ praise/ warfare/ whatever). Whereas what it’s actually going to take is for us to give up and accept that we have nothing at all of value to offer God, other than a surrendered heart. Prayer – as with everything else mentioned – is vital, of course. I’m not saying we should stop any of it. But if there is any part of us that even subconsciously believes we are somehow earning God’s favour or answer, then we have fallen from grace into legalism that needs to be undone and stripped away before God can answer. So here we still are – still stuck in lockdown, and having – I hope – come to the end of ourselves.

As God spoke to me a couple of weeks ago about the need to sit by the river and weep, I believe it was necessary for us to come to the end of ourselves. To realise – once and for all – that we are utterly dependant on God to rescue us from the total mess we have made. To sit in our powerlessness and the ashes of our fruitless efforts, and not try to move on in our own strength, because every time we do that it just delays God’s ability to help us.
Honestly I think we had to become as desperate as Eustace when he realised he was trapped by his self-absorbed, dragonish thoughts; we had to be brought to realise that there is absolutely nothing we can do to change our circumstances. Just as Eustace was granted time locked in a (self-imposed) self-shaped prison to come to his senses, so I believe God has been and is using the ongoing lockdown to reveal that our efforts have no value in His Kingdom.
The only thing that counts is laying it all down so that He can show HIS strength through our utter weakness.

So now that we are here, broken and with absolutely nothing to offer, with no good reason why God should help us – now we are exactly where we need to be.
Now we have accepted that it was our own self-indulgent, self-righteous, self-centered dragonish thinking that got us in this trap, maybe we are desperate enough to accept the help that only Jesus offers.
Now we can see there is not a single thing we can do other than turn to God for rescue from the religious trap we have made for ourselves. And it is going to take total surrender to Jesus doing a deep work in our hearts to free us.
It will be painful for sure – but aren’t we already in pain? The question is simply this: are we desperate enough in ourselves to accept that whatever it takes for Jesus to set us free, it’s worth it. Are we ready to surrender to His great undoing, for Him to strip away everything that encumbers, even though it will probably require Him to go deeper than we can imagine?
Because once we pray from that place of having absolutely nothing to offer, that is the place where God loves to meet us and prove that He has – He IS – everything we need.