When Confidence Fails
Can I just tell you? This week, I am just frustrated. One message has been hammering me for the longest time. And every first of the year, it seems to come back around. Find my purpose. I thought I found it when I discovered the health coach training. I thought this was my purpose – to help others get healthy. I spent many hours learning about coaching and about healthy ideas for living well in this toxic world. I thought God had a plan that involved this new training, but it has not come to fruition as I expected.
However, one thing I did discover in that time of training was that I had a voice that God could use. I began to write because of it. The writing has never been my thing. You can probably tell, I was not an English major. I am a bit challenged in the grammar and punctuation departments. However, I think God opened this door at the right time for me and for His purpose. (And maybe I inherited a little of my maternal grandmother’s writing ability.) Yet, I doubt. My confidence has hit a snag with this writing gig.
My thing was sports; I loved sports. I believe I was pretty good at most sports in those early years. I had and still have good eye to hand coordination. I can catch most anything – drop a spoon and I’ll catch it on the way down. I learned to be careful in my “catching” abilities when I caught a glass that had fallen; but as I caught it, it broke. The lesson learned through a trip to the doctor and four stitches to repair the damage.
When I was in college, I became the manager for the women’s basketball team. When I asked the coach if I could do something for the team, she asked me first if I could play. If that question had come up seven years before that time, I would have said yes. After all, I did play junior high ball. The year after that, we moved from my hometown to a city; and in that move, everything changed. I lost all my confidence in my abilities when I saw the new kids playing at what I conceived a much tougher level. In my freshman year of high school, the women’s basketball coach told me to go out for the team; but at that point the mental games had already begun.
Christine Caine said in a recent message “do not throw away your confidence” – wish I had heard that message forty years ago! But as I listened over the last week to different speakers pretty much saying the same thing, it becomes more frustrating to me. It’s not about learning these things anymore; I just need revelation of why I’m here! Henry Cloud reminded his listeners at a recent conference, we need to discover our end games. We are not to just drift along, but set a sail and go in the right direction (his message was to regularly prune our lives in order to make our lives what we want them to be).
Andy Andrews said in a podcast recently that God doesn’t teach us to swim only to let us drown. If God has given a vision, then He will not change His mind about it. Believe that He will bring it to completion. So the clarity comes through a vision of what God has in mind for each of us. To be useful, yes. To be faithful, yes. To be available, yes. And sometimes it means getting out of the house so that we can be useful in the right place at the right time. Finding purpose is about developing into the man or woman God has designed us to be. We have to discover that vision God has for us and set the sails toward that direction. I get it.
I was comforted in my time with the Streams in the Desert devotional on January 10. In it, this stood out to me: “Beloved, whenever you are doubtful as to your course, submit your judgment absolutely to the Spirit of God and ask Him to shut against you every door but the right one.” Again I gained confidence in this: “In the meanwhile, continue along the path which you have already been treading. Abide in the calling in which you are called, unless you are clearly told to do something else.”
Sometimes God interrupts our plans to take us on another path. But in the meantime, I will continue to write until I am told that season is over. As for the future, I know I need an end game. He has a purpose in mind for me and for you. We should trust God’s plan to get us there. Every small step is part of the path. As Christine Caine said in her message, “do not despise small beginnings.” We got to start somewhere; might as well be faithful to the here and now until the next step is revealed.
Do you see what this means—all these pioneers who blazed the way, all these veterans cheering us on? It means we’d better get on with it. Strip down, start running—and never quit! No extra spiritual fat, no parasitic sins. Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we’re in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed—that exhilarating finish in and with God—he could put up with anything along the way: Cross, shame, whatever. And now he’s there, in the place of honor, right alongside God. When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls! Hebrews 12:1-3 (MSG)
buildingbodies4christ 