Lent Day 15: Persistent perceptions

How do you see yourself?

• As a hopeful individual? or as a person with dashed dreams?
• As a failure? or success?
• As a gifted participant in life? or as someone who "never gets it right"?
• As part of a community to which you contribute? or as an outsider?

The way we view ourselves 
influences our responses to life. 

On the negative side:

• If you see yourself as a disempowered minority in gender, ethnicity, education, or another qualifier, you may look for offense - often where none is intended. OR have you beome an overachiever who tries to get noticed "in spite of" that quality?
• If you see yourself as entitled, you may become a bully. Do you treat others as servants for your wants and wishes?
• If you see yourself as unworthy, you may become a doormat who lets others run roughshod over you (with all the resentment that entails). Or do you blame others when you don't reach your goals? Do you begin your resentments for ill treatment with, "If-only ... ?"
• If you see yourself as a victim, you may take affront at any slight. Do you refuse to forgive those who deliberately (or otherwise) hurt you, gathering the sins of others into a heap of self-ruin?

On the other side, walking in freedom, as someone who is forgiven and set loose from our failures:

• If you see yourself as God's child, you have a Heavenly Father who delights in you. Do you enjoy those around you as God's co-creations?
• If you see yourself as servant of God, you will happily serve others in His name. Do you gladly help others out?
• If you see yourself as worthy of God's attention, the attention of others will only be a bonus if it happens. Are you content with God's approval and surprised when others applaud you?
• If you see yourself as an overcomer, you will rise to meet every challenge with God's help. Do you look forward to new things?

So, how do we change our persistent perceptions?

Covey's Habits (Click for link)

1. Find significance in being yourself. God made you. God loves you. God gives you purpose and meaning.
2. Boost your work with your personality and gifting. If you stock shelves, work an assembly line, are a scientist or an artist, build into your work the things you love. Talk to people (or pray for them) if you're an extrovert. Build your muscles if you're doing physical routines. Learn new things if you're a scholar (wherever you are). Design better ways to do your work if you're gifted in creativity or administration.
3. Look for ways to enhance the work and profile of others. Speak well of people around you. Tell them when they do good work. Let others shine.
4. Bring your spirit as well as your mind and body everywhere you go. Be honest about what you believe without being preachy. If others share their journey of faith (or lack of it), share something about your own walk with Christ. Part of wholeness is bringing all of your self along, wherever you are.
5. Look for the best in your circumstances. Surely there's something good about your life, right where you are now! Count your blessings, name them one by one, says the old song. 
6. Share your gratitude with others. Tell other people what makes you happy and things you are thankful for.

Start today!

Read more:

*But you, O Lord, do not be far from me; O my strength, hasten to help me! Psalm 22:19 (NKJV)

*Joyful are those you discipline, LORD, those you teach with your instructions. You give them relief from troubled times until a pit is dug to capture the wicked." Psalm 94:12–13 NLT

*He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. Isaiah 53:3-5 NIV

*The Lord is faithful; he will strengthen you and guard you from the evil one. 2 Thessalonians 3:3 NLT

Moravian Prayer: Faithful Lord, help us to remember that when evil surrounds us and when dark thoughts bubble up within us, we can rely on your strength to set us right and see us through. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Living familiar patterns rather than new life?

The beautiful back salon of the boat
rocks in harbor

My desk is rocking on gentle waves. I'm having a hard time keeping my fingers on the keyboard as my office sways back and forth.

Actually, the trees outside the house aren't even moving. It's dead calm. Tea waits quietly in the teacup on the glass desktop.

But when I least expect it, I feel like the chair moves back and forth, up and down. We just spent 4 days cruising the coast on our friends' boat. We didn't feel unsteady when we walked ashore to eat or shop. But once in a while, usually when seated at a restaurant, someone would ask, "Do you still feel like you're on the waves?"

And another would respond, " I think my chair is swaying."

Waldemar sets the bumpers
after leaving the dock

Sometimes our habits are so familiar, traumas from childhood so ingrained, or old patterns so deeply set that we act as though we have no choices. Like the imagined swaying of my office walls, we follow the old grooves in unguarded times:

• We lie to present ourselves favorably instead of answering quick questions with the uncomplicated truth.
• We interact with others as "our best self" (who we think we should be - or as we think others want us to be) rather than being honest about our preferences, backgrounds, or giftings.
• We compromise intimacy in marriage by fantasizing rather than enjoying and building up the spouse who loves us. If we have been traumatized by others, we may not trust ourselves to give our whole heart and soul to our mate.
• We're dishonest at work, claiming benefits that belong to others or stealing supplies and resources that belong to others.
• We pretend to diet at meals or when we eat in public while snacking all day where others can't see us, because food is our comfort or friendly go-to when stressed.
• We lie to ourselves about our strengths and weaknesses, focusing on what we do not have so that we cannot benefit from the beautiful ways God made us and the gifts God gives us.

Waldemar and Terry head for the crab pots

I know where I get off the rails, where my little engine jumps the tracks to ugly, familiar destinations. And when I am hungry, angry, tired, or depressed, it's easiest to get derailed into destructive comforts rather than stay the course.

"Not one of us has achieved the goal of the high calling of God," Paul warned. "Let the one who thinks he/she stands be careful lest he/she falls."

God calls us to new life but salvation is not a magic trick where everything we've known or done disappears so that life becomes perfect. This newborn life has to be defended, guarded, and built upon!

How are you learning to live our your salvation? Here are some guidelines that help me:

Waldemar and Debbie navigating
our course

1. Recognize myself. God called me from where I was, as I was, to follow him.
2. Acknowledge God's power. He is able to transform what we have ruined, to create anew what sin has broken.
3. Thank God for his gift of free will. God lets us choose to obey or disobey. He partners his strength and wisdom with our faith (trusting obedience).
4. Form good habits over time to replace wrong thinking or destructive patterns. Little by little, line by line, one day at a time, we are being transformed into the image of God's son (Romans 12:1-2).
5. Trust that God is enough for each day. When we fall, let's repent. Get up and move forward, believing that God knows you and me inside and out and willingly walks with us on life's journey. If he chose you as his child, he already knows the days you will fail as well as the days you succeed!

Read more:
*Praise the Lord. Praise, O servants of the Lord, praise the name of the Lord. Let the name of the Lord be praised, both now and forevermore. From the rising of the sun to the place where it sets, the name of the Lord is to be praised. Psalm 113:1-3 NIV

*[Joab said,] 'Now go out there and congratulate your troops, for I swear by the LORD that if you don't go out, not a single one of them will remain here tonight. Then you will be worse off than ever before.'

So the king went out and took his seat at the town gate, and as the news spread throughout the town that he was there, everyone went to him." 2 Samuel 19:7–8 NLT

*For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. Isaiah 55:9

*Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 1 Corinthians 13:12

Moravian Prayer: Chief Elder, we elect you each day to be the guiding force in our lives—your ways are so much better than our ways. Help us to trust that you know fully, and if we seek to be like you we will be living life to the fullest. Amen.