Happy Monday! It’s day 2 in the first week of our Online Study and I”m so glad you are here!
Here’s today’s message: Please click the arrow below to watch it. I share how we can make sure our lives are BLESSED and not cursed as well as some share things God’s laid on my heart for us. I also announce our key word and verse for the week!
After viewing it, be sure to read below. I’ve got an assignment and answers to many of the questions you all have sent in about the study :-).
[If you’re reading this via email, CLICK HERE to find the video on my website.]
Todays’ Assignment:
Download our Word for the Week: BLESSED (double click the word) to download your FREE printable promise and word for the week, as many times as you want. Stick it everywhere and live like it’s true, girl, cause God wants this for you!
Please read Jeremiah 17:5-8. As you read it, ask God to show You His truth in this passage as it applies to your life – and how it relates to Chapter One where I listed the lies “doubt” whispers or shouts from the sidelines. They really are curses aren’t they?
Journal your thoughts in your notebook and ask God to help you notice this week when you’re tempted to put your hope and find your confidence in the wrong things and people. Then ask Him to help you turn to Him each time for confidence and security that comes from His approval, acceptance and unconditional love.
Don’t Get Overwhelmed if you haven’t read Chapter One yet. I want you to do that first, then watch the video. If you have time answer today’s question. The rest of the week we we’ll be getting to know one another, reviewing the chapter, answering questions at the end of the chapter and discussing them here.
Connect in Community: If you feel comfortable, I’d love for you to be part of the community we’re building here! I want to pray for you. I want to hear from you. Seriously, your thoughts matter to me!! When you have time, share them and read others’. Feel free to stop back by any time. Click “share your thoughts” below this post to be part of today’s conversation.
How Our Online Study Will Work (since I know it might be confusing)
My blog/website will be the “living room” of our online study. We’ll meet here to read my posts, watch videos, find out our assignments and download free resources for the week. The primary place to share our thoughts, prayers and questions will be in the comments section under each post.
As time allows for those who want to, we’ll linger “in the foyer” on Facebook and Twitter. Some will and some won’t. It’s totally up to you! I’ll be there at least a little bit almost every day. BUT the most important gathering place will be right here on my blog.
How will you know when it’s time to connect here? I’ll notify you four different ways.
I’ll Facebook and Tweet it. I’ll send you a note through the Online Study list and include a link back to the post. And, if you’re signed up for Email Website Updates, you’ll receive the whole post in an email that day too. But you’ll need to click on a link to come back to my website to watch videos, download extras or comment and connect.
Remember this is a journey and we’re just getting started. Give yourself time to read today’s assignment and yesterday’s, memorize this week’s verse, pray it out loud and let God love on you! Click “Share Your Thoughts” to do just that!
{Remember, if you’re reading this via email, CLICK HERE to find the video and leave your comments on my website.}
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Hi everyone, I am Merrilyn, a 26-yr-old. I have actually bought this book quite a while ago, when I was struggling with big decisions to move on from my past job and was so heavily dejected by things and people around me. But I did not get myself started with the reading cos everything had settled down eventually by the time the book reached my house. And then I signed myself up for the online study early this year, but eventually ran off steam, and ended up archiving all the emails I received to a folder instead.
Today, I am picking up this book again, reading the chapter one again, and now actually properly doing the Day 2 months behind everyone else, after recently going through many struggles in my life, overcoming some and still being lost at others, knowing very clearly I need to do something about my life and my relationship with God. I hope I can persevere in this, and I hope the community here can support me.
I read the chapter, and watched the video, and I could hear God speaking to me through my stubborn heart and mind. There was this very strong moment of conviction I suddenly felt, which I had not had for a long time. Reading Jeremiah 17:5-8, I felt this very strong questioning of myself and how I have been living so far. “cursed are the ones who trust in men and draw strength from the flesh”, and in chapter one, where are the areas I feel insecure and self-doubt. As I read, suddenly there was this realization of where I have been struggling in for such a long time, especially since I graduated from college 3 years back. I would say, the same verse nudges me in two different ways. Drawing strength from the flesh. There have been two types of flesh I have been trusting in all these while, I am not certain if this is due to the experiences in my early years. I am someone who had been and is someone who relies on myself for everything I do. In my view of things, no one around me can be more reliable than myself, and my expectations for myself have been very very high since young. I had to work through many struggles and family issues since I was 10, and being the person I was since then, I have always found it hard to seek help from others around me, to trust that there will be someone out there who can pull me through all these if I myself can’t. Consciously, I always knew this was my biggest weakness in my relationship with God; I never found it easy to understand and experience what is truly the joy of trusting in the Lord in all circumstances since He has always only come into my mind at my last desperate moment.
Yet, on the other swing of me, I am someone who is very insecure in relationships. I really realized I seek too much for the approval and acknowledgement of the loved ones and good friends around me, that I work so hard to please them, to care for them. I am always feeling so uncertain and uncertain in friendships that I grow so uneasy and lose all peace especially when the friend sis so important to me. Recently, I have gone into this conflictual period with a friend I hold dear in my heart, who feels I have made the relationship strained despite all my efforts to make things work and be comfortable for her. I have been feeling so so tired, and honestly, I know that aside all other things, relationship problems are always my biggest killer. No matter how well I am doing anywhere else, as long as relationship issues come my way, any confidence is lost, any energy gone and things just seem to go awry for me.
As I was reading Jeremiah just now, another part of the passage rang in me instead. And it was the result of the blessings from trusting the Lord, “They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.” (Jeremiah 17:8 NIV)
As I read, I felt this very strong dialogue going in my head. Yes! What have I actually been doing? Honestly, how much have I been trusting in the flesh, in myself or others? In fact, this lifestyle have been very tiring for myself. There’s no actual peace or security. Having my life pivoted on the wrong centre, I have been growing fatigue in the unreliableness of my current centre. Trusting in myself, looking to people for comfort and solace are not 100% eternally reliable. One day, either myself or the people around me will falter, then won’t I be falling into this cycle of dejection and disappointment again and again? I want to be the tree who have no worries in troubles and all circumstances, who have no fear in all problems because of the knowledge that God is with me and I trust Him above all things!
I know this will still be a very hard journey for me, knowing that shifting myself or others away from the centre of my life takes much effort to install a whole new approach in my lifestyle. I have started this effort before many times, and it had never lasted. I want to make this work this time, and I hope the community here can be my support as I go through this spiritual makeover! Pray for me my dear sisters-in-Christ, though I am so many months late.
It is March 24th – today I am starting the journey with you on the “A Confident Heart”. I bought the book when I first started receiving your e-mails. I saved them all in folder called, “Godly”. Why did I wait until today? I believe it is because I have reached another DEEP DEEP POINT in my life. I am a 57 year old woman who has found herself in a DEAD-END job (a temporary one at that). A job where I see that I not only glorify God but I “hurt HIM” by not TRUSTING in Him to get me out. After reading this one chapter, Renee – and reading those SCRIPTURES that you put in this chapter HAS GIVEN ME HOPE!!! Next week as you say in your question at the end of chapter, “…one situation where you could live in the power of this promise…” in Jeremiah 17:7:
I will put in my notice that I am quitting, and I will trust that God has a better plan for me. Trust in Him that He will provide. Here I am a 57 year old woman knowing that God has gotten me through a lot worse in my life– doubting that I can do more, more things for HIM!!! Oh yes, Renee, this is my SEASON for a book like this. I am so grateful YOU LISTENED TO GOD AND WROTE THIS. I will make the time for this indeed reading each chapter — not too quickly, but slow and intentionally feeding off the words that God has given you to put into each chapter. With the Bible in my hand and an encouragement book like this one, that this season will be another chapter in my life that proves to me and my loved ones that I BELIEVE, I AM BLESSED!!!
it’s me again. I went back to the archives to start over because I wasn’t here for the beginning of the course so, I just wanted to start over again. so as I said in my last post, I listened the video blessings for the third time this afternoon, the more you listen to something, the more you get out of it. I read a lot of your comments, it is so nice to have a lot of people women out there who I can have things in common I am way too much of a people pleaser I worry to mucyh for this third time, I heard this video on blessings, as I said in my last post, I really heard God speak to me to take a few minutes out of my day and to just be with him and not think about what’s going on arond me! I’m so blessed to take this course! God is good! thank you Renee!
I also want to say I loved the video blessed, and I’ve been reading a lot of the comments, and it is good to know there are other women who share my struggles with self doubt and being a people pleaser someone mentioned joyce Myer! I’d like to say she is great! Because, i didn’t start the course with everybody else, I have just started going back to the archives just so I can start this over again. so, I just started with the video blessed what a good video. I have a lot of people in my life family and my boy friend who are very negative, and it’s hard being aroudn negative people, Thenk I start to have self doubt. I am trying to surround myself with as many positive people as I can. We have an enemy Satan, and we have to be careful of his lies, and Satan uses people to bring us down, it happens to me a lot, since, this course, I have been a more confident woman in christ! Thank you Renee!