During the last 9 months, God’s really been dealing with me on the issue of performance. As I shared back in February, I struggle with a “guilty conscious” thing – God’s brought a lot of healing, but I know that one of the areas I still struggle (despite it being less so than before) is in tying performance to love and acceptance. In other words, the ungodly belief that when you do “good” you’re loved and when you don’t you’re not.
This came up for me this week when I had an issue arise with an order for a long-time Dyed4you customer. When I read her note sharing about the issue I was gripped with this horrible feeling. And no matter what I did I couldn’t shake it. I finally realized there was something more to this than simply me feeling badly that it happened.
You see it was an accident – accidents do happen and I’d offered all I could to make it right which is all I could do, but yet I was seized with this ominous feeling – like a mixture of terror and foreboding that wouldn’t seem to go. I finally asked God what was really going on and the Lord showed me because I didn’t feel my performance had been “perfect” I was expecting SEVERE consequences. This is NOT Godly programming.
As I recognized this, I submitted this ungodly belief to God and asked Him to heal my heart. And I will continue to pray for God to heal this area until no remainder of this performance struggle exists. I know He’s healed so much of it already, but I also know it’s not done yet. I actually believe God allowed this incident to happen specifically so it would trigger me so He could bring more healing.
Tonight as I was looking at the Hedged In image I was pondering how much I love that it represents God’s love for us despite our imperfections. It speaks to the fierce jealousy of God’s love in the face of our own tendency to wander and mess up. I FEEL His jealousy as I look at this image and it overtakes me in such a sweet way… to know I can be so fiercely loved despite my enormous shortcomings… it moves me beyond words. Thank You Lord 🙂
I think this is one of the most grevious things to our Fathers heart and it seems to befall just about all of us at one time or another. The enemies lies strike at every opportunity to sow this horrible seed. I have felt this many times and I have seen this at work in those who seem very confidant other wise. I believe that some very “successful” people suffer from this the most as it is the driving force in their success. Graham Cooke does a piece on this that I think is very powerful. It is called Inheritance or sometimes God’s love letter. The following link is one on Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fayxh8Uqes0&feature=search My kids and I went to a night of worship with Jonathan David Helser this summer. He started the night out with everyone repeating “I am loved, I am loved, I am loved”. It was very powerful right from the start we felt an overwhelming peace and joy. My son decided that this would become his morning declaration before he even got out of bed. I have started doing it myself and it does make a difference in my day!
I am sure that many of use struggle with these issue’s, I know that I do. i love what Julie wrote abut her son getting up every morning and declaring “I am loved”. I too am going to start declaring that all so. You are loved Meghan and I am blessed to have you be a part of my life 🙂
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