This is my journey to finding my confidence. I’m not sure I have really experienced true confidence. I can fake it well enough! Not the kind of confidence that I have in myself with, but the confidence I should have in my relationship with Christ! This is a journey I am currently on. I have not arrived, nor do I have complete understanding. Will you join me on this journey and we will begin by unflattering confidence?
I have this filling cabinet, it sits in my living room. It looks all nice and neat around it. BUT I almost never open it. Do you know why? BECAUSE I knew what the inside looked like! It looked like two years of paperwork crammed inside of it. It was overwhelming to even consider the amount of work it would take to get back into it and make it use-able again. It haunted me …it called to me from deep within me. There was no more room in it so the papers that were most recent were siting in mostly neat stacks…on the piano, on the couch, on my desk…and on the floor. That is until last week. And as I sat for HOURS every day,Sorting, and tossing, a thought crossed my mind….
The thought was this
This filing cabinet is really as my mind and heart have become over the last two years as I stuffed emotions, and thoughts and…well anything else you shove into every crevice of our hearts and minds saying, “I will deal with this tomorrow or not this week I’m just too busy! ” It’s not a matter of it being to busy, it really is a matter of being too uncomfortable. It’s too painful to deal with the hard places so we stuff it. Just like my filing cabinet, I stuffed so much stuff into it that it started overflowing other areas. And that is what happens with our hearts and minds, stuffing things leads to negative overflow in the rest of our lives….It can lead to angry outbursts or even negative health effects llike high blood pressure and physical illness.
as I prayed the beginning of this year for God to show me my word for the year I asked Him for it to be one that would change my life, change me for the better and that at the end of the year I would be closer to Him than ever before. About a week after praying for that, the word CONFIDENT came to mind. All the other years words were already set in my mind in November BUT this year it wasn’t until the second week of January. I felt lost. I felt as though I no longer knew who I was…at all. I felt as though I had to be all things to all people and I just could not do that anymore. I was at a crossroads with a slippery slope straight ahead of me . So as soon as I got my word I was off digging in scripture. It took me two days searching God’s Word looking up verses and cross referencing them. I went deep and I continue to do so. My verses for the year to go along with my word landed me in the book of Jeremiah. Here is what it says:
Jeremiah 17:7-8
But Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in Him. They will be like a tree planted by the water, that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.”
But my study hasn’t ended there. God directed me to various books. Stripping away the years of clutter that had accumulated in my mind and heart muddying the waters of understanding as to who I was in Christ and who he created me to be. I had lost my creativity. I had lost my passions to pursue things that I loved. I have asked God to reteach me , to show me who I really am in Him, And to show me who He created me to be. I’m learning a lot and I have found a new sense of peace.
Am I there yet? BY NO MEANS! But where I am at this moment in time is knowing that I AM HIS. My circumstances do not define me…HE DOES! And that is exactly where he wants me to be at this moment.
As for my filing cabinet, it is organized and back to working order!
How about you? What is your word for the year? Do you have some heart and mind clutter that needs to be stripped away? And if so, have you taken that to God and given it to Him? If not I challenge you to do so TODAY!
Next week We will discuss what the difference is between Confidence and “Godfidence”
Brokenness comes in all shapes and sizes.
Are you distracted? I know I am. I have been distracted for as long as I can remember. Think I’m exaggerating ?Ask my mom….NO JOKE. Homework in the afternoon after school I’d rather be doing a million other things besides that! Or how about my teachers, or you could just look at the comments on my report cards. I probably could have been diagnosed with ADD, matter of fact I bet I could pass the test for adult ADD, or As I like to refer to it as ADOS – Attention Deficit, OHHHH Shiny- Thanks Mark Hall from Casting Crowns (see his testimony for more explanation)
Notice how In that title of true confession I didn’t say VOICES…but then again sometimes the noises in my head sound a whole lot like voices…..the voices of my children, my hubby , the clients at the pregnancy center, my friends, my family, the newscast anchorman, advertisements, authors, teachers, pastors (oh wait that is my hubby) and let’s add my voice in there too. My voice that reminds me of that mile long to-do list, the needing to find such and such that has been missing for 3 weeks, books to read, notes to send, kids to feed….and the list goes on and on and on. and lets be honest MY VOICE tends to show up at 10:05 as I lay my head down to sleep, or at 4:30(Wednesday and Thursday mornings) OR like last Friday morning 3:30.It really never ends. Just as we scratch one thing off, another three jump onto the page. We keep moving.
