The Daily Word

Happy Monday! What better "word" could there be other than God's Holy Word.... Through this week I will be challenging myself to read it daily, but not an hour long study, just a few verses a day to start, and this is why {other than the fact that every Christian should do this!).... I've recently been fighting a strong battle with my flesh on negative thinking. It has been a life-long habbit I formed about the age of 7- probably in much relevance to my parents divorce. I will have moments when my thoughts will encircle this belief that I will never be good enough & my life is bound by my circumstances. This has carried into my adult life and the longer I struggle with it, the more I am realizing {more than ever before} this is not only crippling my relationships with the ones I love most, but it is sin. It's a self-punishing sin. It's ugly and I hate it, but I have felt helpless against fighting it {due to really not noticing it's grip on my life but just thinking "this is just the way I am"}. So I push people out, especially the good people, and I isolate myself so that I can keep myself comfortable in this sin and not have to face it. In doing so, I go further into punishing myself and giving my thoughts over to the enemy instead of to the Lord. I will value what the enemy is telling me and grow comfortable living with the lies. But I'm coming to a break through. I'm finding myself asking this question: How can a child of God- the creator of the universe who simply breathed all things into exisistence with a single word and then send his one and ONLY son to die in our place to secure an eternal life with our Father in heaven (the Father I didn't have, who meets my every need)- tell themselves, "I'm not good enough". As if we even have the slightest idea what the Lord thinks of us. It's as if my own son, who I love immensely, came up to me and said "why do you love me? why did you give birth to me? you made a bad choice" How would I as a mother feel about that? We NEVER want our children to question those things with us because we build them up in love and gave them life, they are a treasure to us. As so to the Lord are we a treasure, a blameless (thanks to Jesus' death), pure, righteous (when living through the Holy Spirit), LOVED, child of the King! It's a slap in the face to God when I go about living in pity, negative thinking, comparing, being jealous or envious, and questioning my worth. It takes away His ability to use us, to grow us, and to love us. It seperates us from the Lord, and anything that hinders God's full calling on our lives is called sin. And I don't think I have ever recognized it in this way before. It's so AWESOME. Yeah, it took 20 disgusting years of battling this before I've noticed my need for repentance on it {I've always thought I just need to fix it or change it- not really repent of it}. God has given me the simple answer to the horrible lie of not feeling good enough: We don't have to be. Our price was paid. Our short comings, bad choices, regrets, mistakes, our parents mistakes, spouses mistakes, circumstances, doubt, fears, insecurities- ALL of that was paid on the day Jesus carried that cross up the mountain and put himself in our place- so that we can become a child of God. Any time those feelings come about in our lives we must recognize they are lies and the enemy is feeding them into our minds. The best way to fight them is with God's Word. It is my sword in the battle, it's what I can use to fight against any ill thought the enemy feeds in. We are NEW creatures in Christ- we are not helpless against fighting sin. We are more than conquerers in Christ. So, I've honestly never been more excited to read the Word and I'm eager to live my life differently- in pure joy. Thank you Lord for new beginnings! If you find yourself ever struggling with this sort of thing {I think a lot of us do}, bring it to God- whether you trust in Him or not- and see how much He can change you! Love, Me (Colleen) Women Living Well