- Not The Only One!
- Post #146
- 31 Jul 24
- “The Story”
- Howdy,
- Welcome once again into some of my more interesting 8thoughts.☺️ I’ve never been a person who could get into or follow fantasy. When I say fantasy, I’m referring to stuff like ” Lord of the Rings”, or maybe ” Harry Potter”, and a slew of others. . I know that some of you may think it weird because I’ve mentioned several times about being a science fiction person. I know that some people just see it as the same animal with just slightly different markings☺️☺️. I will admit that there is some occasional crossover, and pictures like the Avatar franchise has strong ties to both categories. We could perhaps agree that it comes down to perspective and personal opinions about how we think about and see things.
- Most people will admit to having different moods and attitudes, based on their surroundings and environment, but no one really wants to be thought of as having multiple personalities. I want us to take a look at the man or woman in the mirror today. As we dive in, we will see a three sided prism, that just may resemble something very close to having multiple personalities. ☺️ It’s almost like having different realities. This might not be the best example, but it’s a little bit like looking in the mirror and self critiquing some physical trait, such as weight or asking if you look old after running into someone from high school. Some of us know and will answer honestly, some are in denial, and there’s a good percentage who just won’t care, and maybe just maybe that’s the best place to be☺️☺️.
- First up is the person that we project outward to the world. This is how we want others to see us. When other people see us or think about us, we have a desired list of adjectives that we hope are synonymous with us. You know what those highly coveted adjectives are because you spend a great deal of time trying to cultivate them in your public life. Most of us want other’s to see and think of us as pretty good people. Keeping that in mind , we mostly attribute positive attributes to ourselves, like patience and kindness. We may go on to string other things together, such as generous, giving and thoughtful. We have various ways of demonstrating this such as remembering someone’s birthday or anniversary and following up with a card and well wishes. There are many , who are completely comfortable with the shallow minimum efforts. Some will go a little further, but most are good with the cut out of being a decent person on the surface. Depending on the who , when and where, some may want to be seen the complete opposite of that, and carry themselves as some kind of bad ass. So, while some may want to project the warm fuzzies, others may want to be seen as tough and intimidating, but it’s all about how we want others to see us.
- Up next is the person that You know yourself to be or think yourself to be because sometimes we are ….just really good at lying to ourselves ☺️☺️.. This is the person behind the smiles. This is the person who is steeped in insecurities about so many things that they are barely recognizable from the confident person that was being projecting out to the world . They struggle with self perception of their appearance, their weight, and why they may be a rock star at work, it doesn’t always carry over into their personal relationships with some, that are closes to them. The confidence and strength that is projected outwardly , just isn’t real. This is where you grapple with not genuinely being the person that You want others to think of you. This is when you grapple with the selfish choices that you made in disguise. This is when you know that your generosity was much more about You feeling good about yourself then it was the person that You were being generous to. This is a little bit of back pocket ammunition, so when you choose not to be who ever you project yourself to be for whatever reason, then you can reach into your back pocket to reinflate the doubts of who you really are.☺️☺️ And yes tough guys have this as well. We are mostly familiar with things like men compensating with a sports car. Sometimes bully’s will pick on the least to reinforce their toughness.
- Then there is the person that God truly knows us to be without any of the pretense or fluff☺️☺️. God sees it all, the good ,the bad and unfortunately the ugly. We don’t like to think about us having ugliness in our lives, but we all do. We all make selfish choices each and every day, and we are either clueless or good about justifying our choices and thought processes. Sometimes I feel as if it’s a complete no brainer, that we tell lies because it’s just the little white ones☺️, we take things that don’t belong to us, whether it’s sampling the grapes at the market before putting them on the scale or over estimating the value of our goodwill donation…..and yes I’m being kind☺️. We look at things that we shouldn’t, we talk about people behind their backs, and most have some activity that boarders onto some kind weakness or addiction, and probably a bunch of other shameful activities, that we won’t mention here….but God is privy to it all. It’s a no Brainer because we know what they are and sometimes it only between us and God and your subconsciousness, which can feel like a ton of bricks at times. ☺️☺️
- God doesn’t usually call us out in public, but sometimes what is hidden in the dark, finds it’s way to the light, some like to call that Karma, but I’m not a prescriber to that. The question still remains in the story, just who are we?
- There is still yet a further deception here, and it’s the stories that we tell ourselves. I don’t believe that there hasn’t ever been a person who hasn’t experienced some kind of defeat in life. It could be never learning to swim or ride a bike, but most have something much more substantial, such as the loss of a job or a relationship that got sideways, broken and maybe not turn out with the best outcome. When we have such things in our lives it’s easy to build on to them as if it’s some huge leggo project ☺️☺️. We will tell ourselves negative narratives about ourselves and play them over and over again In our heads , like a high light reel from a championship game ☺️☺️. Very, very, very rarely is there anything positive in nature on the play back. It gets to and gnaws at the core of who we are. It constantly and consistently tell us lies and accuses us and make accusations that are false and damaging. Yeah, we are all human and makes mistakes, but that’s just part of the human experience, but that’s NOT who we are. If there is such a thing as going for the jugular, then this is it in the most classic of ways. It will tell us that we are stupid or not very smart. We are not pretty enough. We are not competent .It will tell us that we should have known better . It will tell us that we aren’t valuable and worthy of other people’s time. It will tell us that we just don’t matter at all. It will tell us that we just aren’t good enough, and just incase you aren’t hemorrhaging enough, they will tell you that you are unlovable and not worthy of being loved. No one’s wants to loves you and never will….ouch!!
- Often I will think back to being a kid and watching the cartoon with the little angel on one shoulder and a little devil on the other. We know in our heart of hearts that these things are not true, but something deep in our core resonate with it, and allows it to flourish, and sometimes have a hay day☺️. I know some pretty smart people, when it comes to academic pedigree. I know engineers that can solve math problems in their sleep and they aren’t immune from feeling dumb or stupid, or less than adequate. Even people who are in committed relationships or in loving families and homes are not excused from the nagging doubts of not measuring up as a partner or parent. Let’s not forget that this small but very vocal small voice comes from inside of us. It knows all of failures, short comings and it knows the things that trigger us and encourage us towards negative and destructive self behavior . Why is this so persistent across the board? Well….
- We don’t like to always think about the fact that we live in a spiritual world. There are things here at play beyond what we can see with our eyes or touch with our fingers. If these negative voices can trap us into believing lies about ourselves, it keeps us from reaching our full potential. There is a false narrative at play here . God says that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. If that is true, then why do we spend so much time and energy living in what is less than, what God says is true,? You can treat it as a rhetorical question, but I sincerely hope that you don’t. ☺️I think for many of us, we are just so much more comfortable thinking about God as the shame producer instead of the shame remover.
- Sometimes someone will share something with me that just kind of blows my socks off and this is one of those. Our sin effects the way that we believe that God sees us. Just think about that for a second before running off past it. Do we have an accurate view of how God sees us? I want to say that is a big fat No! If God says that we are loved with an everlasting love, why don’t we run with that as we do with the false things in our heads. ? Its another false narrative, if God has forgiven you and no it doesn’t matter how many times, then you are forgiven. God is eternal and He says some pretty strong and amazing things about His kids and His love for them, but somehow the number of years we have spent on the earth somehow trumps that. ☺️☺️It would really be laughable if it wasn’t so sad.
- God wants us to live that best life, and now that is all to often now , just a hash tag and an illusion that we want others to believe about us through our social media post☺️. God calls it an abundant life. We usually have ideas as to how that looks and more times than not we aren’t on the same page, heck, we aren’t even in the same book☺️☺️. It’s very few of us that don’t think that we know what is better or best for us, opposed to God’s narrow path.
- A lot, but not all of these negative and crippling narratives are rooted in something that is very close to love and that is trust. We need to ask ourselves another question that is not rhetorical, and that is why do we not trust God? We trust in ourselves so much , when we have a tendency to be incorrect so often. We don’t even trust ourselves, when we say that we do, or so many things would look so very differently . Instead of talking about a road littered with detours when we are firmly in the drivers seat our lives. Our lives look so much more like a shot gun blast. It’s a scatter gun and that’s how our lives look, we shoot and see if we hit anything. I will do this for a bit and if it doesn’t Work then I will try something else. We make plans and commitments that we have no idea how to see them through. We find ourselves constantly starting over with new people and situations that give us a very creepy uneasy dejavu.☺️☺️.
- Again excuse the analogy, but the almost complete opposite of a shot gun , would be a sniper rifle , an instrument of precision . I believe that God has a much more focused plans for us than just surviving the highs and lows of trying to figure it out all on our own. There is often an internal struggle which makes us not trust God or to think that He doesn’t have our best to at heart. It’s so much more than us just wanting different things for our lives than maybe God does. We have a whole host of accomplishments on one side of the ledger. It’s the success in careers , perhaps some money in bank, or all of those cool vacation pictures of us on the back of a camel some where or us scuba diving or sky diving. Those things are all great, but it’s still God who made those things possible and those aren’t the things that make you special, countless individuals paint the same story over again as well. Some have done it a little better or a little less, but it’s been done countless times before. The other side of the ledger is so much more adventurous and scarier than jumping out of a perfectly good airplane ☺️☺️. It’s trusting God with the unknown and scary future. Only God can offset or counter the stories that we tell ourselves and the voice of negative narratives. I will be one of the absolute first to say that sometimes waiting on God and His time table , is hard and honestly often just sucks!☺️☺️. I will counter that with the fact that I have been blessed way to many times by God’s timing to just totally disregard it. The waiting is what usually gets us into trouble. I don’t see, feel or perceive any movement in my story, so I will just push the issue a little bit. It’s my best effort to help God out because obviously He needs my help or He has forgotten about me ☺️☺️. This isn’t new material or ground covered. We can just look back at the story of Abraham and Sarah and God’s promise to give them a child. They helped God out and we still see the ramifications of that playing out today ☺️☺️ We are just rarely patient enough to let God’s plan unfold in the way that it’s designed to .
- We all engage in stinking- thinking, and it’s that negative thinking that draws us away from relationships with other people, but also with God. Have You ever had someone invite you to something or to do something and you declined the invite because you just didn’t want them to think that you didn’t have other more important and valuable things to do? , but in actuality it’s a bowl of ice cream and Netflix ☺️☺️. That’s the attitude that isolate us and allows those feelings of defeat to intensify and to work us over , especially late at night or early mornings.
- God’s word tells us to take captive those thoughts. I don’t know how thoughts can be taken captive apart from God’s Spirit. Basically we need to take inventory. Inventory is to balance any and all negative thoughts and balance it against and through the filter which God see you and the things that He says about you. If those thoughts contradicts what God says about us , then we must reject them as not true and just bold lies. God says first and foremost that you are loved. You are chosen. You are accepted. You are forgiven. You are set apart to do good works. You are God’s child, but He is also a friend. God says that He will never leave or forsake you . God says that He is your strength, when you are week. He says that He fights for you. He is your comforter during tough times . The cherry on top is , He gave His son for you , God isn’t frivolous, so we must be of great value to Him. If God is for us , than who can stand against us? Certainly not those negative narratives that we like to let have free range in the pastures of our minds. God is trust worthy and He has a really, really long track record to prove it.
- Till Next Time ✌️ Peace!
- Sandy The Southerner
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