I was told to focus on my recovery and not focus on things like this but I can't help myself. I know I'm supposed to focus on reading the Bible everyday. Instead of occasionally reading my favorite verses. This is a big challenge for me.
Generally, we do what we
want to do. And the more we want to do a thing, the more we do it. In other words, when we have the choice, we do what we most love to do. This is the Big Problem for us all. We love ourselves more than we love God; we desire to please ourselves, to serve ourselves, in a myriad of ways, rather than our Maker.
When God comes to us and says, "I made you to serve and glorify me," we recognize immediately this gets in the way of serving ourselves and we rebel, digging in our heels, following our own will and way instead of God's. We can't help ourselves, actually; it's just the way we are apart from Him. (
Romans 7:18; Romans 8:5-8) But in this rebellious, sinful living death waits for us. (
Romans 6:23; James 1:14-16; Galatians 6:7-8)
So, God did for us what we couldn't do for ourselves: He dealt with our "old man" once-and-for-all through the atoning death of Jesus on the cross of Calvary. God put to death our old, rebellious, flesh-focused Self with Jesus on the cross. When we trust in Jesus as our Savior and Lord, we are united spiritually with him in his death, burial and resurrection and thereby liberated from our "old man," from the power of the person we are without God that is incorrigibly selfish and rebellious. (
Romans 6; Galatians 2:20; Colossians 2:9-13)
In this condition of separation from the "old man," we are free to truly love God above all. And we possess all the love God can give to us in the Person of the Holy Spirit who lives within us. (
Romans 5:5) The divine love of the Spirit flows in us and through us, filling us and moving us more and more toward God only as we submit to the will and way of the Spirit, however. God does not fill rebels with Himself; the Holy Spirit does not transform those who desire their own way over Gods. He waits for the believer's submission each and every day, acting upon them, filling them with himself, only when they yield themselves to his doing so throughout every day. (
Romans 6:13-22; Romans 8:14; Romans 12:1; James 4:7-10; 1 Peter 5:6)
When the Spirit is in control of you, and He is filling you with himself, your desires will begin to change, your thinking will reflect God and His truth more and more, and your life will become increasingly holy, joyful and peaceful. This is always only what
God can do, though. Your attempts to create these things in your own life
for God will always be fleshly, corrupt, superficial counterfeits of the real thing, that are exhausting to maintain and ultimately give you only an experience of
your own human will-power (or lack thereof) and strength, not God's.
At bottom, God wants to give you an experience of Himself, to increase your knowledge of Him, to commune directly and personally with you. When you run ahead of God, though, and try to do for Him the work He says is His own to do, you cut yourself off from experiencing God's manifestation of Himself in you. And then you find yourself stuffing yourself down, fighting against what you really would rather do, pining for old sinful habits, and so on. It's miserable and it isn't God's way to fellowship with Himself.
The key is
submission; this is your work, if you like; not merely depending upon God; not merely trusting Him; not merely trying to obey Him. Yield yourself to Him, submit to His will and way, consciously, explicitly and moment-by-moment throughout each day. This is the where the battle to walk with God truly is; this is your chief, your first, "job" in walking with Him. Everything else in your relationship with Him tumbles out of a life of surrender to Him.
