Sacrifice :: Growing Up

On Sunday I attended a church while visiting my brother in Slidell, LA. The series was about spiritual disciplines, and the topic was 'sacrifice'. On Monday I opened up my devotional book and the topic of the day was, "the necessity of sacrifice". Coincidence? Not usually with God. Anxiety ensued. If you read my previous post about good gifts, part of the reason I'm afraid to receive good gifts from God is because I don't trust myself with them. I'm afraid I'll either lose them, break them, or let them become an idol and so God will have to take them away. So...anxiety began to bubble up because my first mental jump was that God was going to take away some good gift he had given me because I was doing something wrong.

Wow. My picture of God can be so skewed sometimes. I continued to be anxious for the rest of the day and eventually talked with one of my friends that night. As I talked with her, I was able to verbalize the fear and God was able to speak truth. It's funny how truth can cut through fear & anxiety. God made it clear that He is going to be asking me to sacrifice things, but He's speaking about a discipline of sacrifice, not my greatest fear of taking away the good gifts I'm just now learning to accept from Him.

God has work to do in that area of fear, and obviously there's a journey He's going to take me on to teach me about making sacrifice a regular part of my walk with Him, and I'm thankful for both because I know one will take me deeper into healing and the other will take me further into sanctification and letting go of 'treasure here on earth'.

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What's clear in both the things God is doing in the area of receiving good gifts and with the pieces about sacrifice is that God is bringing me into a new level of maturity. He's asking me to start stepping into & past places of fear so that I can move forward as His disciple. Fear has so long paralyzed me, but He has brought and is bringing me into a place where I can move through that to the other side...all because He's shown Himself trustworthy and faithful.

Part of this came out of being at the artists' conference. While there, they talked a lot about authenticity and part of being authentic as an artist means developing your gift and being good at whatever your craft is. So far, I have just coasted on my natural giftings because I've been afraid to step out and develop my gifts for fear of failure. Now that I see that fear for what it is, and God is bigger. My desire to become more of who God has made me to be is greater than the fear because God is greater...and as long as my eyes are locked on Him, I won't sink. (Mt. 14:30)

Jesus, I pray that you would increase my faith, so that as I accept your invitation out of the boat onto the water, I wouldn't doubt, but keep my eyes locked on you. In Jesus' name, Amen.