Where do I fall off on my race?

This morning my devotion asked me to check where do I fall off on my race in trusting Jesus fully and loving people?

Truly, there are some patterns. It goes like this. First I have some unrealistic expectations on either myself or others. Then I become angry to myself or others because the expectation is not met. Afterwards, I realized that it is wrong to be angry. But instead of admitting it, I became disappointed of myself being angry. In other word, I become angry because I was angry!

Both the primary and secondary anger will then make me feel miserable. I wanted to shout out but there is a part of me saying that I should not do it. So I will become depressed as the strong emotions are pressed instead of being managed. At certain point of time, I blow up.

This will then create third level of anger when I realized I have blown up. This cycle can go on and on that I become depressed and hard to get back up as my self-defeating behavior and disappointment increase.

That’s one pattern. Another pattern happens when by God’s grace I recover from depression.

Initially I considered any progress as God’s grace. But as I receive grace upon grace, instead of depending on God’s future grace, I start to think that those successes may not be God’s grace but my own work.

So I start to feel good about myself and becoming addicted of it. I worship achievements instead of God and I want more achievements. So I set myself into more things or more difficult items for the journey to get greater satisfaction. I then don’t really care whether what I want to do are what God designs me to do. All these lead to unrealistic expectations and the cycle repeat.

From the above cycle, we can see that it is hopeless unless we break the cycle by God’s grace and continue to depend on His grace instead of ourselves.