My stomach flipped upside down, but I wasn’t on a Ferris Wheel or a rollercoaster. A battle raged inside of me. I wanted to understand and live a good Christian life but there was a big problem.
Confusion. Frustration. Dichotomies. Perplexities. Imbalance.
I often felt like I was trying to put a puzzle together using pieces from two different boxes.
I spent a lot of my days thinking that what I learned of God and the Bible was for the big issues in life. The death of a loved one. Moving from place to place. Financial challenges. Large health crises. When those things came, most of the time I took them to God and prayed He would carry me through them. At other times, I didn’t because I trusted He knew what He was doing and would take care of me.
In the meantime, fear was digging deeper into my soul; lies were slithering into my subconscious; personal uncertainty and doubt took up more room in my heart.
God was personal to me, but understanding how to take what I knew of Him and apply it to my heart issues somehow slipped through my mind not allowing His truth to put down permanent roots.
I was grasping the wrong things I thought were true. Having a testimony for Christ was stressed while I was growing up. I took that to mean I had to be concerned with everything I did and said and I needed to worry about how every person in life saw me.
My interpretation = be concerned about what other people think of you.
Truth = As I live in relationship with Him, He’ll show me what His Spirit and I need to work on together. I only need to concern myself with what He thinks and says about me. In His word, I read about how much He loves me. (John 3:16, Psalm 139)
Another point of confusion dealt with personal value. I heard phrases like: be the best you can be, give all you can, prove yourself and your worth. I understood there were levels of relationships, energy, and by all means, doing for God was important.
My interpretation = you’re only valuable if you meet someone else’s standards.
Truth=God loves me completely. I can’t do anything more to earn His love. And I can’t lose His love. Life is about a relationship with Him. (Romans 5:8, I John 4:16-19)
There are many more similar aspects that have played havoc with my insides over my life.
Just as my physical hands can only grip a certain number of objects at one time, so it is with my mind, heart, and soul. I can become overwhelmed with partial truths, absolute lies, and the fears that accompany them. Life’s perplexities can make me feel like I’m in a whirlwind. I can choose to pay the greatest amount of attention to what someone else tells me is right or true.
Or I can make the choice to focus on the absolute truth of who God is and what He says in His word. Jennifer Rothschild says that when we trust the reality that Jesus, as our Shepherd, takes care of all we need, we rest in Him.
Rest sounds much better to me than having my mind wrestling to meet all those misinterpreted issues and the opinions of others.
I hear people say that truth is changeable and dependent on any given situation. But God is the only One who sees and knows all and can give real wisdom for life. He is truth (John 14:6) and He never changes (Hebrews 13:8).
It’s time to ask God to shine His truth on the lies the enemy hopes to push deep inside each of us and trust the One who is true at all times. I’m continuing to work at giving up my own interpretation of life’s situations and seek God’s. Will you join me?
Photo Credit: Unsplash-Hans Peter Gauster
