This blog will cover pieces of a couple of those topics, but will mainly just be a piece of my heart. My thoughts derive from conversations with others, conversations with God and conversations with myself.
Just a warning, only read ahead if you are okay with truth that is not candy-coated.
So many times in life, we sabotage our friendships, marriages, careers, church experience, relationships and families with these 2 words "I DESERVE". We get to a point in our marriage or our friendship where we stop becoming selfless and start becoming selfish. We decide that we "deserve" better. We start to hold the people around us to a different standard than we hold ourselves. We start to make decisions about our lives based on other peoples faults. Granted, God made us in his image and yes we do deserve the best. But when we start making life decisions based on superficial emotions, we are stabbing holes in our lifeboats! We are often quick to judge a friend or family member, forgetting that we are also not perfect. We expect from our spouses without remembering or making note of our imperfections. We expect a church to be like a hotel or restaurant that we can rate and review. Here is when this mentality becomes dangerous. We start making decisions about life and relationships based on our over-analytic analyses instead of making decisions based on the truth of Gods Word and the rationale of real life. What we deserve? What we deserve? We all deserve to burn in hell forever! Put praise God that because of his mercy, grace and unconditional love, we have the option of escaping that fate. I love when God's Word talks about getting the plank out of your own eye instead of trying to help get the speck of sawdust out of your neighbors eye. I really love the way the Message translation puts it. I think in our "every man for himself" society, the virtue of being humble gets lost.
Part of the problem is that we over-evaluate and find fault in relationships in order to justify pushing people away. We don't want to become vulnerable or exposed in relationships, so we find any reason to push people away. If those people get too close, they might just realize our struggles or our shortcomings. OH NO! Our fear of rejection take over and we reject them first so we don't have to deal with the conflict of it. Remember when we were younger and we used to have fights and disagreements with our best friends and then we would be back to being best friends the next week (or day)?? These days, if friends or family members fight, they may go weeks or years without speaking to each other or resolving things. This is an unhealthy beginning to a very ugly cycle. And this is just the way satan wants it. He wants people to be emotionally shut down. He knows how much easier it is for God to use us if we are not emotionally impaired. What we deserve? We deserve emotional freedom. We need healthy friendships, healthy family relationships, healthy marriages and our kids deserve for us to teach them how to have the same. If these truths hit home for you, I encourage you to do some self-evaluation. Uncover the ways that the enemy has tried to twist your thinking and your motives. Only you know and only you (with God's help) can change it. Repair relationships, make new friendships, start treating your spouse like royalty, don't judge and over analyze your church. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, with prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, make your requests known unto God (Philippians 4:6). If you have questions or need prayer, feel free to inbox me. I like to make my blogs light and encouraging, but sometimes somebody just needs to share some truth. If you would like to hear some of these truths in a different format, check out this audio download of my recent message at our Faith Church New Milford campus here.
He's still working on me, To make me what I ought to be. It took Him just a week to make the moon and stars, the sun and the earth and Jupiter and mars. How loving and patient He must be! He's still working on me!
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