Teach Me the Hard Way of Your Statutes

On Asking God to Break What I Cannot Surrender

“It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I may learn Your statutes.”

Psalm 118:71 (119 Grail)

There is a part of me that still resists being formed.

It hides behind prayer. It hides behind study. It hides behind the language of surrender while quietly negotiating the terms of its survival. I say I want God, but I still want to remain recognizable to myself. I say I want His will, but I still hope it will resemble my own.

The psalmist does not speak this way.

He does not ask for comfort. He asks for truth.

“Search me, Lord, and see my heart. Put me to the test and know my anxious thoughts.”

He understands something I have spent most of my life avoiding. God does not heal by agreement. He heals by exposure.

The Word of God does not cooperate with the ego. It dismantles it.

I see now how deeply rooted my self protection has been. Even in prayer, I have tried to remain intact. I have asked for grace, but quietly hoped it would not cost me everything. I have asked for illumination, but feared what it would reveal.

Because illumination is not gentle.

It shows me the fragmentation I have lived with for years. The divided loyalties. The subtle pride. The constant effort to preserve some ground on which I can still stand independently of Him.

The psalmist prays differently.

“My soul clings to the dust. Give me life according to Your word.”

He does not hide his condition. He does not pretend to stand. He tells the truth. He is already in the dust.

This is where I find myself now.

Closer to the truth, but not yet free.

I see the structures within me that resist God. The instinct to secure myself. The instinct to remain the author of my own life. The instinct to approach Him without fully surrendering.

And yet something deeper has begun to emerge.

A desire that frightens me.

Not the desire to be comforted. But the desire to be made real.

“Lord, I have chosen the way of truth. I have set Your decrees before me.”

To choose the way of truth is to consent to loss. To consent to the slow dismantling of everything false. To consent to becoming poor in ways that cannot be reversed.

I do not know how to do this.

I do not know how to surrender what I cannot fully see.

So I ask Him to do what I cannot do for myself.

“Train me to observe Your law. Keep me in the path of Your commands.”

Train me, even if the training feels like death.

Strip from me what does not belong to You, even if I resist. Expose what I have spent years avoiding. Break what must be broken.

Not because I am strong enough to endure it.

But because I am too weak to remain as I am.

“Let my heart be blameless in Your statutes, lest I be put to shame.”

I see now that the shame I fear most is not exposure before others. It is exposure before God. The moment when nothing remains hidden. The moment when every illusion collapses.

And yet it is only there that healing begins.

The psalmist says something I am only beginning to understand.

“It was good for me to be afflicted.”

Good, because affliction reveals what comfort conceals.

Good, because affliction destroys the illusion of self sufficiency.

Good, because affliction brings me to the place where I can no longer pretend to live without Him.

I do not ask for suffering.

But I ask Him not to spare me from truth.

If to heal me He must break me, then break me.

If to free me He must dismantle everything I have built, then dismantle it.

If to draw me to His heart He must lead me into silence, into loss, into the slow death of everything I thought I was, then give me the courage to remain there.

Even if I never see the fruit.

Even if I never feel whole.

Even if all that remains is this hunger.

“Your word is a lamp for my steps and a light for my path.”

Not a light that shows me the destination.

A light that shows me the next step.

This is enough.

To walk without seeing.

To be formed without controlling the process.

To be led into a silence where I no longer defend myself.

“Turn my heart toward Your will and not toward selfish gain.”

Turn it, Lord. Because it does not turn easily.

Draw me, even if the drawing feels like loss.

Break me, even if the breaking feels like the end.

Only do not leave me intact.

Do not leave me as I am.

Take from me everything that prevents me from belonging entirely to You.

And when nothing remains but weakness and silence,

be there.