The only way I can think to continue is to just be honest with you all about all that I have been thinkingt he last few days. But I have to start with my OWN death to prideof life in order to do that.
I went through a repeating cycle for many years of trying hard to be good and do what would please God, then failure, then depression. When I would come out of the depression (which was great apathy and sluggishness), I would determine to try again and the cycle would repeat. Each time, the depression was worse than the one before and lasted longer.
My way out of this cycle was to be shown (by Gods grace) what was going on and how He saw it. My attempts to be good and my depressions were a pouting arrogance and pride of life. I was so stuck in this cycle that I never would have stopped but for His grace. In fact, I think suicide may have eventually become more than just a pouting thought at some point if He did not end it.
There are two types of children. When being taught to ride a bike, the one will be fearful and say, don't take your hand away and they will be both exuberant and disappointed when they see that they were doing it alone but that the parent did not keep their promise. The other child, full of pride of life, will push the parents hand away and insist they can do it and needs to crash and burn and bleed and cry to learn the humility to listen to the parents instructions before they take off the next time.
I am NOT the first child. I am the second child. And my pride of life was SO great that I kept getting on the bike and not listening for many years, over and over again.
But just because I am the second child and not the first, does not mean that I will not eventually grow in humility. It just means I need longer and need more cut lips to break me of my pride of life to more humility.
Peter and I, in my opinion, are more like the first child. But when we learn the lesson and learn to humble ourselves to others so we can hear them instead of telling them they are doing it all wrong, when we finally begin to die to our insistence that the other child will NEVER get anywhere and has no hope, we can never, ever be dragged too far back to pride again. Because the final train wreck God allows is too painful for us to ever forget.
This is not to say that the first type of child is very humble. They might have more success in humility in the beginning...it seems so to me anyway, but they become prideful later, thinking, just as the second child does, that they HAVE no pride of life, when they are refusing to humble themselves to the other and bear offenses every bit as much as the first child. BOTH children are looking down on the other. BOTH can't hear the other. And the more they both scream about how humble they are, the more apparent it becomes that they aren't. So you see, they are really not any different. Both are needing to humble themselves to the other even while both are insisting: he hit me first, he started it, it's only fair he apologize, etc.
And it all keeps continuing because NEITHER has been humbled and broken of pride of life yet. If they were broken by the Lord, they would be the one humbling themselves, making themselves lower, bearing the others offensiveness with love, not demanding apologies. They would BE the one pouring out their pride of life for the good of the other.
Ah, but each thinks that to humble themself to the other would be to HARM the other, because it would just let them continue in their pride of arrogance. They CAN'T humble themselves to the other as Jesus commands because to do so would bring about disastrous result. You see, to BEAR the others offenses in humility and quietness would have ill effect on their soul. So they can NOT bear the offenses quietly but need to point them out. So they have only very good intentions in disobeying and refusing to walk in the spirit and put themselves lower than the other to listen and really hear.
If Jesus could not bear the offense of being called a liar or a heretic or insane, with humility and refusal to give an angry defense or demands for apologies, we would be in very big trouble. If we say we follow Him, and we cannot bear offenses like these as He did, we are lyingt o ourselves and others. we are both deceiving AND deceived.
