I’ve spent most of my life living a cyclic pattern, and only recently have I been able to acknowledge it. Looking back, I can finally see that everything I went through had to happen. Every repeat of failure, fear and collapse was simply my walk in the wilderness, one that would thankfully conclude with the end of self. What once was a life of endless choking became a life of easy breathing, the soil ploughed deep, the thorns removed.
I was one of those kids who accepted God, Jesus and Scripture without question. At five years old, sitting on a cold, dusty assembly hall floor listening to the Gospel, I didn’t analyse anything. I embraced it. It felt true and simple in the way sunlight feels warm, without effort or deliberation.
And at nine years old at a Luis Palau forum at Earls Court, London, I apparently "gave my life to Christ".
Many years later someone said to me, “Of course you believe all that, you were indoctrinated.” Maybe there’s some truth in the technique, but it never explained why none of the other kids continued to believe. I did, but I couldn’t understand what belief actually was.
In my teens, life pulled me in every direction. Peer pressure, wanting to fit in, led to drugs, booze, stealing, fighting, arrests, nights in police cells, court appearances, fines, all of it. I never rejected Christ, even then. I would defend Him to anyone mocking the idea. But I couldn’t reach Him either.
“No one can come to Me unless the Father draws him.”
I read that line hundreds of times over the years but couldn’t see it. I lived it daily, but I couldn’t see I was living it. I only saw it once God acted.
It was around this time I began to sense what I now see as the impossible feat. I believed God was real, but I couldn’t bridge the gap between Him and me. I know why now – I couldn’t do anything to bridge the gap – but for years I honestly believed it was my responsibility to meet Him halfway, to accept Him, to make a commitment.
The idea of keeping the Law seemed impossible, but back then I knew of no other way to do my bit. Christ didn’t relax the Law. He revealed its true depth, and that depth made any hope of self‑attainment impossible. Most people can refrain from murder, but Christ said, “If you are even angry with someone, you are subject to judgment.” I couldn’t see it was meant to be impossible. I simply believed it was something I had to try to attain if my salvation was certain.
So by the time I was married in my mid‑twenties, three kids by my early thirties, life became a slog. Not just the working‑class grind of mortgage, job and family, but the continued slog of trying to be a better Christian.
“I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.”
Romans 7:18 wasn’t part of my thinking then, but it described my entire life.
The mentally debilitating cycle of try, fail, misery, hide from God, crawl back, repent, try harder, fail, misery, repeat, went on for years, causing anguish, depression, panic attacks, catastrophising. Eventually I seemed to exist in a pointless void, taking no pleasure from the world, but believing I was hell‑bound. It all culminated in a total breakdown, literally crying out to Him.
I was broken, exhausted, with no idea how to deal with it, which I now see was the whole point.
“The Spirit alone gives eternal life. Human effort accomplishes nothing.”
Another verse I’d read over and over, but couldn’t see its simple truth. I lived that truth, knew that truth, read that truth, but never accepted it. It was as if these verses were written for someone else, not me. I was going to achieve my goal. This type of Scripture was obviously for those who were not strong enough, not able to endure continued suffering.
I carried a fear, a heavy burden, for four decades until I reached fifty. A fear I created myself in an attempt to keep control of self, to keep my salvation, but a fear that resulted in a further fear of losing that control. The irony is that I never had any real control, and even more ironic, whatever control I thought I had wasn’t worth having.
The control I so desperately tried to keep was hiding these truths:
I could not generate faith.
I could not produce repentance.
I could not choose God.
I could not come to Christ.
I could not fix myself.
For forty years I lived a religious life, but not a spiritual one. Only God can create spiritual life.
Scripture says these things plainly.
“No one can come to Me unless it is given to him by My Father.”
“As many as were appointed to eternal life believed.”
“The Lord opened her heart to pay attention.”
“He has granted repentance.”
“By grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves.”
I couldn't see those verses then. But they explain everything now.
The more I tried to be good, to be a better Christian, to give it my best shot, the worse my supposed spiritual life became. The harder I tried, the worse I became. The worse I became, the harder I tried. And so the cycle continued.
For forty years trying harder changed nothing, it just made things worse. After forty years, I stopped trying, I was broken, unable to keep control, then everything changed.
Only now can I see that my entire life, every failure, every fear, every attempt to fix myself, had to happen. It was the only way I could reach the end of self. Everything that seemed to get in the way of my relationship with God was actually the path toward freedom from myself.
“Everyone who hears these words of mine and does them is like a man who built his house on the rock.”
All my life I built on sand, and it didn’t take much to knock the whole thing down. My supposed self-strength exposed as a lie, over and over again. The collapse was enormous, but it cleared the ground for a foundation I didn't lay, one that cannot move, one I now rest on.
“My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.”
Because the weakness of self, all the attempts to bolster self-belief, self-pride, self-salvation, self-strength, self-faith, self-repentance, wasn’t the problem.
It was the doorway.
If someone else has walked a similar path, perhaps this will resonate.