Clouds and countryside on the drive home from worship today ...
Good evening, readers! I took a rather unintentional blogging hiatus, but am back now, hoping that you have had a most enjoyable holiday season so far.
I was looking through my doc files today and came across something I wrote about a year and a half ago -- I was writing about the struggle I've faced in the past when meeting new people, with fearing that I wouldn't live up to expectations. Although God has given me so much more freedom in this area the past couple years, still I know this can be such a difficult mentality to overcome ... so I'm sharing a portion of this tonight, in the hope that it might encourage someone else! I am cutting in a few sentences into the writing:
......
... it’s a pressure that God never desired for us to have. Because He tells us in His word, that
we are made in His image. That we are fearfully and wonderfully made, in fact.
That we were valuable enough in His eyes for Him to actually let His own Son be
brutally murdered in order that we could spend forever with Him, in His presence. Why is it that I lose sight of
these facts so, so easily? Why is it that I forget that God has given me a
spirit of power and love and discipline, and not of fear? And why is it that I
can think so little of God’s power and might as to lose all confidence, when He
treasures me so much as His child?
Satan wants me to wallow in this fear and forget these
facts, that’s why. He wants me to mess up, to become so disabled by fear that I
will distance myself from making and maintaining friendships and will have no strengthening
companionship with other Christians. But God wants me to live an open life,
living His Word for His Glory, both in the presence of other Christians -- that I
may encourage and be encouraged, that I may build up and be built up -- and also
in the presence of the world, so that I may be a leavening influence. He wants
me to use my personality and gifts, not to hide them for fear I cannot use them
well enough, or will make a fool of myself through them. He gave me everything
I am for a reason, and if I waste it in fear and hiding, I have become guilty
of the same crime the servant with the one talent was guilty of. It’s time to
live in the open. It’s time to live without fear. It’s time to let God take
control.
......
The mountains of home.
