My mind and bees within...

It appears that the more I feel normal, the more I feel that I want to run back to the OCD just so I do not have to go back to a life of servitude and fear where I must obey every whimsy thought that comes my way in fear that that may be God speaking to me. I have definately determined that, in this stage of my life, I am not able to trust the voices in my head any longer. If God wishes to speak to me, He will do so in a way that I will understand. My counselor said something profound to me last Monday that I will try to not forget and will hopefully never let go of (paraphrasing with emphasis mine), "Chris, you are not in charge of your spiritual growth, the Holy Spirit is. Don't be so prideful into thinking that you have the capabilities of living a perfect holy life--that you are able to become this thing in your head when you may only be called to just exist without incident." This is profoundly freeing to me as the pressure is indeed off me at this point as every step I think I take towards holyness, I am up taking 50 steps back out of true fear of what or where that step will take me. This is freeing to me as I now can truly go to the throne of grace as I am and not as I should be knowing that God won't force me into anything beyond what I can bear. My mind truly just doesn't comprehend the grace of Christ to the extent it needs to...it just keeps buzzing and beating me with compulsions and demands that are so conditional, that it just make me want to beat myself just to stop the noise, just to stop the confusion. I see so many Christians who truly want to know the Lord more and sing about it through their 'Christian' songs and 'worship', yet so much of the contemporary 'Christian' songs today deal with 'giving it all over to God', 'leaving this life', and 'detaching oneself from this world' and other psedo-spritiual drival that I am beginning to see why this is driving me to drink (literally and figuratively)--when we place ourselves in charge of our spiritual journey, we are in hopes of lifting ourselves up vs. letting Christ lead us to where we need to be, where we can only be, what we can only be -- ourselves. I have seen Christians 'give up things' that they love out of 'devotion' to God when it, if they were honest with themselves, tore them up inside-out and, in all reality, didn't lead them to perfect love but just took a part of themselves away from them. Their intentions may have been ok, but is gritting our teeth and pushing the process of sanctification really going to help us in the long run. If we need Christ to save us from hell, don't we need Christ to continue the process of sanctification? If Jesus' yoke is easy and His burden is light is true, then why do we continue pushing further ahead trying all the more harder to think it is now up to us to 'run that race' as if we could possibly lose the race started when we came to faith. Christians, repent! Stop losing yourself in your feeble attempts of holiness. The world fully knows your attempts at holiness are feeble and can see right through it and ultimately do nothing for the kingdom of God. I am convinced that growing to know and love God and others is not dependent on ourselves, but is a gift of the Holy Spirit. He is in charge of your growth, not you. Stop the madness and start being real with yourself and express all the passion and freedom that is within you and let Christ's prescious mercy and grace fill in the gap of what you lack. If His grace is not sufficient for you, then it is time to wake up and realize you are taking on more then you can possibly handle--perhaps, even, that you are following a different god. Be who you are....and if you love just one person along the way, praise God for that gift. Peace to you.