The past couple of days I have been posting reminders to myself on why God loves me. Reminders that I need to believe. Desperately.
I woke up this morning and had to admit to myself that I may have reminded myself that I am not my feelings, but this reminder was not working today. In fact, none of those reminders were working today. I still found myself feeling guilty, hopeless and tired. Yes I know that I am not what I feel. Yes I know that God loves me despite myself and that He loves me because love is who He is. Yes, I know that I am His after all He said it. All these words are true but why do I feel guilty? Why do I feel like I should just bury myself deep in my bed and not get up? Why do I feel like hiding? Running away? Why do I feel like cannot live up to what it means to live a life that is true to all these things that God has said?
It is a fight
You see, for the past couple of weeks months years I have been working towards living up to what God sees me to be. I don’t know if you have a friend, mentor or parent who constantly tells you what they see in you, what they know you can do and what they dream for you? And you want to believe them. You wake up in the morning and remind yourself that you are a writer. A writer is consistent and reliable. And you make up your mind to write, consistently. You have all these ideas … stories running around in your head and you want to write but then you sneeze. And it reminds you that you have some cleaning to do. Some washing up to do. Some arranging to do. Some showering to do. Some praying to do. Some office to get to. Some office work to do…. Before you know it, the day is gone, you are back at home, your brain is fried and all you want to do is something mindless. You switch on the tv and search for something you have not watched before that is passably watchable… something mindless. Much later you settle on something and all through it you find that you are rolling your eyes at the storyline and when the credits scroll up you are left feeling irritated that you lost two, three or four hours of your life. You go to sleep and wake in the morning and nothing really changes. More of the same.
How then do you become this person that everybody seems to think you are meant to be? Sell the tv? Refuse to pay for the internet connectivity? Take up a class? Join the gym? Start power walking every 6pm? Fast? Great ideas! You try them for a couple of weeks or a week… maybe a couple of days….. hours and then fall right back to where you started. Before you know it you look up and a year has gone. The book remains unwritten. The project has not started. The budgeting tool remains unused. The loan balance has barely reduced. The eating and exercising habits have not changed and last year you could probably fast one day a week, this year you are lucky if you last a couple of hours.
Then you remind yourself that you are not what you feel. God loves you despite of yourself and that He loves you because love is who He is. That He created you for a purpose and that He has great plans for you. However, this morning these reminders fill you with guilt because you look at yourself and think, I want to change so bad. I want to rise to be the person that He created to be but what if I cannot do it? I have all this evidence that I am nothing like He created me to be and with each day that passes, the evidence keeps piling up. Maybe it might just be easier to stop believing in Him all together. At least that way, I will get rid of this guilt, this feeling of not measuring up.
Still fighting
Before you start worrying about what is happening to me, I would like to remind you of the name of this blog. Carol Grows. Present continuous tense. Dear Reader, please note that I will always attempt to share with you my journey while I am in it. My journey of growing. As real as I try to be with you, I am just as real and if not real-er with God. What I have shared with you in the paragraphs above was my morning confession to God. As I prayed, I remembered something that I heard someone share recently. He said, “The devil does not care about your soul”. What does this mean?
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. John 10:10 NIV
In this verse, what I see are the differences between why God does what He does and why the devil does what he does. The devil only wants to steal, kill and destroy whatever he can about me. About you. My dreams, the great things that people have spoken over me and the greater things that God has planned for me. Your dreams, the great things that people have spoken over you and the greater things that God has planned for you. God wants to breathe life into you and me, renew our minds, redeem, restore and stake a claim on us so that we may live. The devil may not kill us, but he will be satisfied with getting us to say “what is the point?”, killing the vision and getting us to give up. Our giving up is equivalent to the devil scoring a win against God. One less person to acknowledge that they are created by God, relating to God and living according to God’s purpose, a purpose that will exalt and bring glory to Him. The devil does not care about our soul in a way that brings an advantage to us. However, God does.
The earth is the Lord ’s, and everything in it,
the world, and all who live in it;
for he founded it on the seas
and established it on the waters.
Psalms 24:1-2 NIV
Team God!
Today, this is what I want to remember. That I belong to God. He cares about me. He loves me. He has good plans for me. And with this reminder I have the hope that I need for this moment … for this morning … for today. There is a battle that is bigger than me at play. I want team God to win and I hope that you want the same for yourself too. Here is the prayer that I am praying over myself today.
Dear Father,
I thank you for remaining true to Your nature – always faithful and loving. I pray that my eyes my remain eager to seeing myself as You see me; my ears remain open to hearing more from You; my tongue remains loose to confess any loss of hope and rebellion; my mind remains pliant to Your moulding; my heart turns towards You and remains soft to Your prompting; my hands stretched out and open to receive from You and with my feet steady yet quick to obey instruction from You.
Amen. I hope you will pray it over yourself too.