I can just imagine your thoughts now.
“What do you mean don’t believe in myself?! Are you telling me I should hate myself?!”
No. Not at ALL!!!
In order to love others…you have to love yourself.
Matthew 22:39
“But there is a second to set alongside it: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.”
However. You should not trust in yourself. The Bible repeatedly says to trust in God and not ourselves. If we lean on our own understanding…eh…the end is never pretty. The Bible says in Jeremiah 17:9-10 “The heart is hopelessly dark and deceitful, a puzzle that no one can figure out. But I, God, search the heart and examine the mind. I get to the heart of the human. I get to the root of things. I treat them as they really are, not as they pretend to be.”
Yowza.
So, the saying “just follow your heart”…well…really is awful advice if God is not the king of your heart. If you have not asked Jesus to not only be your Savior AND Lord…yeesh.
Guys, there have been many things that I’ve been deceived about. I used to lie. Regularly. I used to gossip. Regularly. And I wasn’t convicted about it because it was in my nature to do so since I was a child. And this Psalm is right on…not just about David..not just about you…not just about me…but everyone. We ALL are born with a sinful nature. No one is exempt from it.
Psalm 51:4-6
“You’re the One I’ve violated, and you’ve seen it all, seen the full extent of my evil. You have all the facts before you; whatever you decide about me is fair. I’ve been out of step with you for a long time, in the wrong since before I was born. What you’re after is truth from the inside out. Enter me, then; conceive a new, true life.”
David messed up all the time. And he made two huge booboos that most Christians would shun someone for today. He committed adultery and then had the lady’s husband sent at the front lines of battle because he knew he would be murdered. And you know what’s crazy? He was still the apple of God’s eye. Now God was not pleased AT ALL with his actions. David and his family even got punished for it. But David got forgiven because He repented. David ALWAYS ended up being honest with God and knew that if he had victory it was because He was standing with God. He trusted God for the victory. When He stood before Goliath, He didn’t brag about his strength. He believed in the power of “God of the Angel Armies” and declared the battle was already won. He had such amazing faith in who God is!
This is how we are supposed to live daily! Trusting in who GOD is! Trusting in who JESUS is!! Jesus came as a man, a human…to understand our pain, our war with temptation from the devil and our flesh….to show us how to live…and ultimately….to die in our place and be raised back to life for our justification. He did this with out us asking for Him to…He did this as a precious gift. He took our punishment so we could be saved. And what is required?
Romans 10:9-10 (AMP)
“Because if you acknowledge and confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and in your heart believe (adhere to, trust in, and rely on the truth) that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart a person believes (adheres to, trusts in, and relies on Christ) and so is justified (declared righteous, acceptable to God), and with the mouth he confesses (declares openly and speaks out freely his faith) and confirms [his] salvation.”
Simply acknowledging Jesus as your Lord and believing that God raised Him from the dead. Repenting and believing in Him. Trusting that what Jesus did is enough to wash away your sins. You CANNOT save yourself and you CANNOT earn righteousness. You can only have righteousness that Jesus FREELY gives you and that is HIS.
I battle with this all the time. I battle with feeling like I have to do some good religious thing or Jesus will hate me and send me to Hell. Which is rubbish. It’s so easy to fall into a works based mentality. That’s why we have to pray daily and have a relationship with Him. Jesus will never lead us astray! Follow His life He lived in the Bible…and if you do, you’ll notice He spent every second dependent on God. He always made time for God. He always believed God. He had simple, powerful faith that caused the dead to live, the mute to hear, the blind to see, the demon-possessed to be set free and for sinners to be saved.
So, no. Don’t believe in yourself. Believe in the Jesus in you.
1 John 4:4
“My dear children, you come from God and belong to God. You have already won a big victory over those false teachers, for the Spirit in you is far stronger than anything in the world.”
And to all of my fellow racers that are raising funds, this is how it will be done. Not trusting in yourself, but trusting in the one that lives inside of you. God will provide, you just have to believe! (And this goes for anything in life, even if you’re not going on the race! lol!)
With Love,
Meraia
