The pastor at our church has been doing a sermon series that he calls "Getting a Spiritual Heart Cath." The sermon series is based on Psalms 139 ...search me and know me..., and the pastor has been talking about the need to allow God to come into your heart and clean out all of the "blockages" that keep you from having a relationship with Him and being effective for Him. It seems like self examination has been one of those things that keeps coming up in my life.
The marriage conference that Zack and I went to 2 weekends ago, the first speaker talked about how marriage often served as a mirror that showed you things about yourself that you didn't know before and often didn't like. Then Gary Smalley at the same conference, using the example from scripture where Jesus states, "He is the vine we are the branches," talked about how we need to let God come in and trim out all of the "shoots" in our lives that aren't producing fruit.
Last night, Rachel, my sister in law, and I were talking about how there are experiences in life that teach us about ourselves...and sometimes they show us things about ourselves that we might not like.
Then, today at my ladies Bible study, Beth Moore talked about how a lot of us are really good at pretending that everything is fine and we are careful to only show one side of ourselves to those around us, a facade. She actually was comparing us to a pancake that isn't flipped. (interesting. :) lol) She stated that God wants to deal with both sides of your pancake, not just the side that you think is pretty and well put together.
So, of course, after having had the idea of letting God examine your heart and point out things through self examination brought to mind over and over for several weeks, I had one of these moments today. One of my friends was telling me about something going on in her life and my insecurities surfaced and I was forced to face some things about myself and my reaction to this friend that I didn't like. It's not like this feeling/response to a situation is a new thing in my life...no, it is a deep seated issue that I have dealt with for years, but God chose today to really point it out to me...After having the conversation come to mind repeatedly throughout the day, I went running this afternoon and spent my time thinking over my reaction and what it pointed out to me about myself, and I decided that I needed to try to give this part of my life over to God...there is no way that I can change this in myself as much as I dislike it and wish that I were different...it is an area that God will have to work on!
Have ya'll ever had experiences like this?
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Hey Paula...thanks for sharing your experience...and yes I have these experiences too...for the past month God has been showing me that I have problems dealing with my anger...I heard it at our marriage conference, I've been reading about it in my Emotional Competency Class, and it has come up in mentoring too. The other issue I have been dealing with is being too critical of myself...I set my standards for myself higher than I do for others. I can never reach the standards that I set for myself...I am learning that I am way too hard on myself thinking I need to do this or that better, or that I need to be better. My mentor told me today that I need to see myself the way other people see me. When I got in the car after talking with my mentor the song What Would Life be Like, By Big Daddy Weave was playing. It was surely playing just for me. the part that struck me most is where it says, "What if you could see yourself Through another pair of eyes What if you could hear the truth Instead of old familiar lies
And what if you could feel inside
The power of the hand that made the universe." It was pretty amazing. You'll have to look up the lyrics to get the whole picture, but it was awesome.
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