1. You are never in God’s “doghouse”
There are no unforgiven sins and you are unpunishable. If it weren’t for some of the other points, I believe we would all have very comfortable, pleasant lives. That being said, every Christian who truly and completely surrenders to God has to go through the “dark night of the soul,” which can be surprisingly long and dark. I don’t think the idea is to teach us to trust him (as one so often hears), but rather to reduce us to a state of utter dependence. God has to amputate whole parts of us, which he can see (when we can’t) as deformed, so that they can be miraculously replaced with healthy limbs and organs. There are several great temptations during those times: One is to give up; another is to curry God’s favour by affecting those behaviours we think he expects from us. The latter is a grave mistake, as he alone can transform your character. All things considered, your life is as good as it can be right now. God is fixing you under constraints that he invented, but by which he is also bound.
2. You are a soldier in a cosmic battle
There is an epic struggle for the heart and souls of men. Every believer is assigned a task, and a corresponding rank … some are privates, some are generals, and some aren’t sure. The stakes are high, and like soldiers throughout the ages, we are often kept in the dark. I suspect that, if churches had a functioning body of prophets, we would be less in the dark than we are right now. Nonetheless, God has a mission for every Christian, and you make a difference whether you see it or not.
3. As long as you are submitted to God, you are in the centre of God’s will
Don’t even think about your failures and sins. God will give you the power you need to accomplish the task at hand, and probably not a bit more. One possible reason for this is to protect us from hubris. If there are sins in your life that you can’t deal with, don’t worry about it. Just remember that there is always something God wants you to do, and the odds are that it is something you would rather not do. God is surprisingly unconcerned about our failures, but he is equally unconcerned with our comfort—and we need to be, too. This is war, after all, and we may be sleeping in wet, vermin infested trenches for a long time before engaging in battle or seeing anything good at all coming from our efforts. The vital point is that, as long as you are submitted, the outcome is his responsibility, whether or not you see any success.
4. All of the power of God resides within you in the form of his Spirit
You literally can move mountains, or do anything that God can do. Why is that power so ridiculously removed from your experience? Hard to tell, but I think that there is a need to grow into spiritual adulthood before these powers can even be touched, much less wielded successfully. Spiritual adulthood comes sometime after the long night of the soul, when a spiritual outlook and lifestyle have been internalized, abetted by things like the disciplines and learning to walk in humility.
