How to Move Forward with Confidence

I had taken a hiatus from writing, to do a little soul searching and deep dive into another communicative passion of mine, painting. Yet God keeps bringing me back to writing with little nudges and encouragements. That still small voice is elusive, yet present. So thank you for your patience as I recharged my writing batteries. I hope it will prove fruitful for both of us.

So how do we know where to direct our energies? How do we hear God’s still, small, yet persistent voice? Our desire is to walk on God’s chosen path but so often it seems hidden and obscured like an overgrown trail. I don’t have all the answers, but I can share what has been working for me. The path is rarely illuminated with neon flashing signs, much to my dismay, but often feels more like a team scavenger hunt. Sometimes I have to forge ahead blindfolded with nothing but my faith and intentions, sometimes I actually feel God has taken my hand and pulled me down a specific trail. The key is, regardless of how you feel, to move forward anyway, trusting that even if you can’t hear God’s voice, He is walking beside you, ever vigilant and holding the flashlight out in front of us.

The first thing I find essential to my quest for confidence is examination. I pause to examine my interests, passions, or innate talents that God has created as part of my DNA. Ask yourself what gives you energy? What do you enjoy doing or learning so much that you could devote a whole day to it. What have others told you you have a knack for? What never gets old? It’s okay if these change over time, you may be surprised how God doubles you back and weaves skills together years later. A few cautions here. There are healthy and unhealthy passions- ask yourself if, when you find yourself immersed in an interest that seems relentless, is this something that could benefit anyone other than yourself? Would your pursuit of this interest bring harm or negatively affect others? Sometimes, the same passion can be pursued with positive or negative outcomes, so be sure your motives are intentional and beneficial to yourself and others. Make sure you are pursuing your interest with passion and determination but with balance. Be relentless, but mindful of keeping your relationships and responsibilities in balance and not neglecting the necessary cogs and wheels of life. If it’s from God, you can bet it will be beneficial to you as well as others, it will allow you to love others through your pursuit, and it will allow you to glorify God while pursuing it. Perhaps ask (and pray about) what it is God put you on earth to do? How can the unique set of skills, abilities, and interests He created you with benefit humanity? Don’t ever let your mind get enticed by imagining what others might think or say, you are uniquely you and it is imperative you give precedence to what God is calling you to do. No mere mortal can possibly imagine or know the incredible plan God has designed for your life and yours alone.

“Each of you has received a gift to use to serve others. Be good servants of God’s various gifts of grace.” 1 Peter 4:10

“Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord…” Colossians 3:23

Once I have honed in on my God-given interests and passions the next essential task is execution Make a plan, set goals. What is it going to take to learn what you need to learn, to grow in the areas you need to grow, to continue to improve and make progress? It is rare that God gives you a dream that doesn’t require participation, difficulty, and effort on your part. So create a game plan, what does a best case scenario look like? What steps need to be in place for that to happen? What do you need to do next? Establish a vision for what you feel the Lord wants you to do and what the non-negotiables may be. Do not lose sight of incorporating how this vision is going to benefit others, He most certainly has plans to bless you (Jeremiah 29:11) but you’ll notice from the stories in the Bible that there is always a big picture plan that blesses thousands of others, not just the story’s hero. The dreaming and imagining can be done as you lay down each evening and prior to rising each day, but in between times, the work and effort has to take place.

“Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord…” Colossians 3:23

“Never be lazy, but work hard and serve the Lord enthusiastically.” Romans 12:11

Perhaps the most difficult step to control is to expect success. I feel obliged to warn you that there will be speed bumps in the form of people feeding your negativity, telling you that you can’t or shouldn’t be trying or criticizing you. Most often the loudest naysayer, however, will be your own brain. Take responsibility for your thought life, and don’t allow any negativity to creep in, Pray for wisdom, and then kick the negative self- talk to the gutter where it belongs. You can be sure God will not talk in a slanderous or negative way to a beloved child he created in His own image and adopted into His personal family (if you’ve accepted the gift of forgiveness and salvation from Jesus, that’s you by the way!) Expect progress, pray for progress, trust God to move with, in, and through you!

“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” 2 Corinthians 10:5

“Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” Mark 11:24

Finally, the last tip I have found beneficial is simply endurance. Dreams, interests, and talents may initially come with energetic ease, but you probably aren’t going to get God’s blessing to simply dream and passively sit back and wait. He is going to expect you to move into your dream and talents by doing, by possibly failing, learning, and trying again. It takes faith, and lots of it. It’s the human way, but if He gave you that dream, and gave you those abilities, He will accept those struggling steps as steps of faith and your perseverance will be rewarded. There may be obstacles that life throws at you in the form of unexpected expenses, illnesses, and interruptions which may slow your progress down, but don’t let mere obstacles stop you from pursuing what God has placed in your heart. Equally important, do not let a timeline discourage you. Moses, Joseph, David, and even Jesus executed God’s plan for their lives over the course of years, not days, so set your sites on the execution of your plan on a step by step basis. Do not let yourself look up for the goal line and get discouraged simply because it seems far off. Baby steps may be small, but they are progress nonetheless, and necessary for big steps later down the journey.

“The Lord directs the steps of the godly. he delights in every detail of their lives. Though they stumble, they will never fall, for the Lord holds them by the hand. Psalm 37:23-24

“We can make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps.” Proverbs 16:9

Yin/Yang

Every year I try to identify a word or a concept that I resolve to implement more deliberately in my life or be more cognizant of. This year yin/yang or contrast is a perspective I have committed to being more aware and appreciative of in the year 2021. I have settled on this as my focus for the year partly because of the unsavory influence of 2020.

We were all impacted in 2020, to some degree, by the pandemic and its fallout. So pervasive was the reach of this global catastrophe that every life was altered or affected to some degree by the defensive counter measures put in place. The pandemic was accompanied by many natural disasters, socio/political controversies, and general unrest spurred by uncertainty. (Go ahead, say it, “Thanks Mrs. Obvious! Tell me something I don’t know.”). Well, as a result, 2020 will likely forever have a negative connotation associated with it because the negative attributes of 2020 were emphasized, magnified, and reinforced repeatedly.

Yet let’s not overlook that there actually were good things happening in the midst of the 2020 chaos. I know it isn’t the trendy thing to highlight, but the families into which the 3,791,712 babies were born likely feel 2020 left lasting happy memories of joy in its wake. There were untold stories of heroism and sacrifice as healthcare workers and civilians alike combined their resources to respond to needs across the nation. Many lives were saved as the result. There were many examples of division blasted upon the digital and network avenues to be sure, however there were countless more acts of unity and cooperation that went unreported.

Did the manifestation of so much negative news that made the good happening around us more noticeable or less noticeable? Were there so many things going well that unwelcome surprises of 2020 were magnified or did the magnitude of the pandemic cause us to trap our thoughts in a negative loop, never noticing the contradiction of positive events still happening in the midst of chaos? Without rain, would we notice the sunshine? Without cold would we notice the warmth? Without illness would we have any gratitude for health? Without defeat would there be any victory?

2020 was a rough year for me personally. I hit new lows in mental and physical health. I lost a parent, a pet, and perhaps my perspective. The pandemic compounded difficult challenges at work into what seemed insurmountable obstacles which hijacked my attention personally and professionally. I realize my challenges were minuscule compared to the tragedies life handed many in 2020. Yet nonetheless, my reality was my brain crashed into an invisible wall constructed of sharp, pointy rocks (for those of you wondering I was not texting and driving). The wall I hit served as an impetus to search for relief from stress, which generally steers me towards art and God’s Word. Proper perspective was key.

Painting is an effective stress relief tool for me. The act forces my left brain to shut down and allows my right brain to drive for awhile (the right brain drives on highways of sunshine and happiness; any walls encountered are constructed of chocolate covered marshmallows, messy, yet delicious and harmless). My right brain is gloriously ADHD and is completely unaware of time or the stressful events filling my news feed. I have learned in the disengaged, hallowed halls of the right brain that a painting is not successful without contrast. Contrast in values is crucial. Without darks, the lights have no impact. Without light values, the dark is simply an uninteresting dark. Artists know that the greatest contrast between light and dark in a composition should be where they intend the center of interest to be, because it draws the attention of the human eye first. For a painting to have light, it must have dark. There must be elements of the unexpected to add interest and attract notice. To really see a painting, you need to step back to provide proper perspective; to be able to take it all in- to fully see it in all its messy glory.

The Bible, likewise, points out the necessity of perspective in life, and often highlights contrast and contradiction, completely counter- intuitive at times. For example, to have more, we must give more. Check out Proverbs 11:2-25, “One gives freely, yet grows all the richer; another withholds what he should give, and only suffers want. Whoever brings blessing will be enriched, and one who waters will himself be watered.” Or Luke 6:38, “Give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you. Use it will be measured back to you.” You are unlikely to find this philosophy outlined in any university level business textbooks promoting capitalism.

Another upside- down concept presented in the Bible is “But many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first.” Matthew 19:30. This verse would make absolutely no sense to any respectable, rule- following first grader, nor to anyone standing 4 deep in a line at the DMV. Yet the rules abiding in God’s kingdom are often are mirror opposites of those we observe on earth.

Perhaps the most mind-blowing concept for us to swallow is that to truly live we must first die, both physically and to self. In Luke 9:24-25, Jesus proclaims, “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it,” or John 11:25-26, “ Jesus said to her, “ I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.”

The ultimate paradox is the life of Jesus. He is the perfect embodiment of a sinless life; God in human form. Yet he was attracted not to those who were perfect (or at least those professing to be) but to those knowingly trapped in the darkness of sin – the tax collectors, prostitutes, the broken.

“…Jesus said to them, ‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.’ “ Mark 2:17 (NIV)

His light served not just to reveal their sin, but to provide hope and shine a light on the escape route. He modeled the ultimate display of servanthood by willingly giving up His life to give each of us a path back to God, forever removing the veil between God and man so that we could boldly and undeservedly approach Him with our need for forgiveness. We would not know we existed in the darkness of sin if it wasn’t for the contrast of His light and goodness outlined in the Bible.

So I begin 2021 with hope in the illogical, the opposites, and the yin/yang of God’s kingdom. I embrace storms because they highlight the coming calm, I accept misfortune because it grows my gratitude, I accept darkness because it magnifies the appearance of light. I have a prediction- this year, like every year prior, will present us all with both difficult and gratitude-worthy events. May your 2021 be filled with recognition and acceptance of blessings and gifts that God has provided us in the midst of whatever may come.

Share this:

Share this: