I know you sometimes feel ordinary but you’re not.
You are one of a kind ~ a unique and beautiful blend of all God wants you to be.
You may feel invisible … like you’re just one of millions of others.
But there’s no comparison. God sees you friend.
And when God sees you, He sees someone He loves.
Listen as He whispers…”You are precious and honored in my sight …. and I love you.” Is 43:4
He also sees someone He knows.
“You have searched me, LORD, and you know me.” Ps 139:1
Since God knows you, has a purpose for you and loves the way He made you, I’m confident He wants you to feel the same way. Watch, listen and let Him sing these truths over your heart today. {And if you’re reading this in email, click here to watch it online.}
You really are…
Beautiful
Loved
Cherished
Chosen
Treasured
Sacred
You are His!
May God’s sweet affirmations replace all those comparisons. As you identify, understand and embrace who HE created you to be, I’m praying that like the psalmist, you can learn to say with confidence, “Lord, You created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb, I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well” (Ps. 139:13-14)
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Want to find out more about who God created you to be?
Here’s a link to a FREE Spiritual Gifts Assessment to see what your gifts are!
It’s FREE for everyone!
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Today’s GiveAway: I’m giving away 5 copies of the personality assessment that I talk about in my book A Confident Heart, In chapter 8, I share an in-depth section about personalities and how our unique traits play a key role in our God-given purpose. Today’s giveaway is called Wired That Way Personality Profile and includes a time-tested profile with definitions, instructions to eliminate confusion, a detailed explanation of your scores, and a handy team-building chart that shows how the different Personalities interact.
Enter to win: Share a little bit about what God is speaking to your heart or showing you today through my P31 devotion, this blog post and/or music video. Can’t want to hear from your heart. Simply click “share your thoughts” below. {And if you’re reading this in email, click here.}
Read my Encouragement for Today devotion The Comparison Trap.
It continues to amaze me how you seem to have a direct link to my thoughts. I have been very challenged in seeing myself the way God sees me. And with that challenge comes all manner of other struggles such as confidence, self worth, understanding the Love of God and how He loves me. Your devotionals and emails always minister to me and for that I am very grateful. I am looking forward to gaining some direction from the Spiritual Gifts Analysis…thank you for making that available. You are truly a treasure, God bless you.
Renee bueatiful song! I loved that! I’ve never heard that song before! I listened to the words! and whenever I get discouraged, I’ll just think of the lyrics to that song! I love mercy me! They are a great band! Thank you! and thank you for your encourageing words!
I have a hard time seeing the beauty of within that God has given me to reflect on the outside my whole life. I have compared myself to so many people that it isn’t funny anymore and I am having a hard time know who I really am as a child of God and what God has for me to do. I have been an approval seeker all my life also, feeling not good enough for even myself. My husband is slowly trying to help me, but I have always had a hard time thinking for myself at times 🙁 Things are getting better. After the third child had come and staying home with her it has made me do a lot of thinking to find out who I really am. Slowly but surely some things are becoming clearer.
I love how God works and puts what He wants us to hear front and center in our lives. This study is exactly where God wants me right now. He has been working on my heart for a long time with breaking the comparison trap and I finally feel like I am having my “aha” moment. I am getting it! Thank you for sharing God’s truth!
I can’t tell you how much I really needed to hear this right now. You know those times you have pitty parties because things aren’t working towards your favor? Well that’s just the way life goes for me some times and right now that’s how my life seems to be. The boyfriend of 4 years ( a rocky relationship at that) has yet broken up with me again to only apologize and want me back to give my those promises that I have always wanted. I know I have those beautiful, kind loving caring insides. I show them all the time. Sometimes I wonder just what my faults are for my relationships not to happen. 1st my marriage of 14 years then my boyfriend. I now know I need to concentrate on me and my relationship with God and everything will fall into place. God see’s my beautiful self and that is all I need.
Thanks for this.
Deanna
I am made for so much more than the circumstances that I’ve let myself become part of, and I am more than what is hurting me today…thank you for sharing this song!
I love Mercy Me & that song has always spoken to me as one who never thought of herself as beautiful. One point really jumped out at me in your devotion, “The Comparison Trap”. I never realized I was comparing what I felt on the inside to what I saw on the outside of someone else. Wow! What a difference that makes in perspective. I am going to remember that when tempted to compare myself again. Thanks for sharing 🙂
I grew up never feeling good enough for anyone and always trying to be like everyone else. I never gave myself my true identity. I always find myself trying to compare myself to others rather than just being happy with who I am. I really do not know who that person is but I am trying to find her with God’s help. This devotion really spoke to me. Thank you Renee.
THIS IS A BEAUTIFUL VIDEO. SO ENCOURAGING. THANK YOU FOR SHARING. GOD BLESS YOU AND YOURS KAY
I want to cry as I read the different posts because I am realizing more and more that I am not alone in this. I’ve struggled for many, many years with self-doubt and low confidence and as I read Renee’s Day 1 Devotion for the 7-day Doubt Diet, I realized that I covered up those real feelings with fear and worry. I want to be all that God has created/called me to be, but there are days when I simply don’t know where to begin. I often have a difficult time looking at myself in the mirror because of the guilt and the shame of my past and present. I can’t understand how anyone can love me, even when they say they do. The other day I asked my husband if we could go to a particular place and he responded, “Anything for you,” and immediately I believed he was only saying it because he wanted something from me or that he was being sarcastic. I have to admit–I don’t know how to let anyone love me for me. My children tell me all the time and it makes my heart melt because I know they mean it, but it has been hard for me to show them what true love is. Before I started reading a Confident Heart, God woke me up one night and gave me 1 Peter 4:8 and 1 John 4:18 to read and I immediately applied it to the way I haven’t been loving others, but I believe now that it was God’s way of showing me how much He loves me. Most people are criticized by others, but I am my biggest critic (about everything), which in turns makes me very critical and arrogant toward other people. I have believed so many of the enemy’s lies and I want a way out. Please keep me lifted in prayer as I become the woman, wife, mother, and daughter (of God) that He has called me to be.
Blessings,
Lakeeia
This P31 devo is really speaking to me. Especially the line that says “I was helping where I was needed but not where I was gifted.” I’m looking forward to doing the spiritual gift assessment to learn where God has gifted ME instead of where I think I SHOULD be. One ministry I do feel called to do, yet completely inadequate is co- leading the womens ministry at my church. I believe this may be our topic for our upcoming monthly meeting. Thank you for your insight and for sharing your God-given gift with others!
My husband and I have been married for about 3 1/2 years. We’ve had more than our share of roller coaster rides. We’ve been to countless counselors. We’ve dealt with cheating. We’ve dealt with separation. We are currently back together trying to work out all of our issues. It is very challenging because, like the old saying say, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks! We are trying and learning every day…every HOUR even. But we are starting to see more ups coming our way and the downs being dealt with quicker and with more love at the heart.
I am so blessed and honored to be a part of this group to share with and hear from everyone else. God bless each and every one of us!
As a working mom and wife it is so hard to have the confidence it takes come days. Just this week I was having a “breakdown” of sorts saying that I can’t do everything by myself and that I feel like I am a bad mom and wife for not keeping up with our home and such things. I realize that i am not doing things by myself, He is always with me! I just have to remember that everyday. I am thankful for a very helpful husband and hate that I took out my frustrations on him that day. He is understanding and just wonderful. Thank God for sending him to me. 🙂
Good morning everyone! (seem to get this a day later than everyone else)
God started trying to show me how loved I am a few years ago. I would come home from work and my daughter would run to the front door…..mind you, she was probably 13-14 at the time….and throw her arms around me saying, “Mom! you are home!” I was confounded(?), I can clearly remember asking myself, “Why does she love me so much…what is so great about me?”
Soon after, God started opening my eyes to how much my husband loves me. For me, the first 10 years of our marriage was hard, probably because of my unrealistic expectations, but hard nevertheless. (In my eyes) I was never good enough, there was alot of fighting, he is a choleric personality, I am a melancholy, neither of us understanding each other and me always focusing on the negative. Even when it started getting better, I kept living in the past. But now, even during an arguement, God has enabled me to see the love and passion my husband has for me. Sometimes I sit and cry over the revelation of it.
Now, God is showing me how much He loves me. Already not feeling adequate, I came to Christ thinking He was the answer to all my problems, well, He is, but not the way I was thinking He should be. Again, unrealistic expectations. When things didn’t change the way I thought they should, I began to feel unloved by God, not good enough, not performing well enough, etc. My heart grew hard and I lost hope in Him and walked around with a negative “in Christ” attitude. BUT NOW…through this study He is showing me who He really is, not who I had made Him out to be. He is showing me who I am, not what Satan had convinced me of, but who God says I am….beautiful, loved, cherished, and sacred!!
As my perspective of Him changes, and my perspective of myself changes, my perspective on life is changing….it is looking better everday!! ♥
Thank you for sharing Ladena
I see myself in your story too!! It amazes me how similar many of us women on this journey are dispite our dividers t circumstances
Our God is an amazing God of hope and love!!!
Karen
This was such a sweet morning as I read this blog. He reminded me just how much he loves me. I recently got a promotion at work and have not had as much time to do this study because of that but he reminded me this morning that I need to get back on track. I need to get back on the path he has sit out for me.
I have a really hard time with the comparison trap!!! I always feel like someone can do it better, have a better idea or are more spiritual mature than me. I have been working on this and pray I can finally just look at myself the way the Lord does!!!
First of all I want to say to you Renee & all the ladies online taking part in this great Bible Study “A Confident Heart” it’s been a personal journey like no other… and I love Mercy Me – YOU ALL ARE BEAUTIFUL IN HIS EYES!
I loved my encouragement for today’s devotion “Comparison Trap”…. you know I thought once I left High School I’d stop the whole comparing me to them… But I still do it, everywhere I look work, TV, shopping mall- I always wish I could look like that- but I like what your friend Genia said ” Every tie we compare ourselves with someone else, we can never measure up because we’re comparing our insides with our outsides”
And in all honesty- When I watched Renee on video- I compare—I wish I knew as much as she does, I wish I could be as open and talented like she is, I wish I had as much faith…. She is so pretty!!! it’s terrible- and it’s almost automatically done… sorry Renee it’s just true how we are wired to cut ourselves down??? Chapter 8 whew…hard one! Lord Help Me!!!!
Aloha from Hawaii xoxoxoxox
Hi Donna
I am happy to see and read you here this morning. I hadn’t noticed any posts from you lately and have been thinking and praying for you
Thank you for your honest comments. I too thought I’d eventually grow up and out of this comparison trap, but like you I find myself doing it daily in my mind watching other stronger, more faithful, beautiful women around me. My prayer for ALL of us women struggling with this is that God through Renee’s powerful example and book will set us ALL free!
Have a blessed day Donna!
Karen
Hi Karen!!! I so happy to hear from you!!! I hope all is well with you- I know right- the whole comparison trap- UGH! I just need to always remember ” I AM GOD’S MASTERPIECE – HE HAS CREATED ME”
Thank you Karen for always praying for me! I too pray that with the help of this great online bible study and “A Confident Heart-that all us women will be set FREE”
Have a Joyous Day!
xoxoxo Aloha from Hawaii- Donna
This is big for me right now. God has been showing me that He created me just as I am and I am good. I am really working with Him on loving myself, accepting myself, knowing myself and not comparing myself to others. It’s a lot but with Him it is all good. Thanks for your post and encouragement and truth today.
The Lord is really working on me and it feels great. I am beautifull and I don’t need anybody else to compare with I did it so much it made me I’ll. I have even forgiven my husband for dissapering from my life and know that it’s not my fault your bible study taught me that. I see a diffrence in me and that makes me joyfull.
God is showing me to be more confident… showing me that if I hide in HIM I’ll be ok… but I can’t hide from him or his will and purpose… I need to loose my fear of rejection and believe for myself what I encourage others to believe in….
Wow, where did you get all these women on line. You only had a few the regular’s you must have called them to join in. Like i said you have a certain group, i have shared and you treated me like an outcast. 🙁 Just like the world, you have your own group of women. Only five, one from Canada, and five others. Sad, i have tried to join in and i don’t even get a answer back.
I really appreciated the pray from the devotional: “Dear Lord, thank You that I’m Your masterpiece, created anew in Christ Jesus so I can do good things You planned for me long ago. I want to stop comparing myself with others so I can become who You created me to be. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.”
I had a rough afternoon with my 17 year old. Not anything new, but she hit one of those spots deep inside that is from middle school when I didn’t dress well enough. Then in an office in LA when I didn’t dress well enough. Today she was telling me again that I wasn’t dressed well enough.
I spent the day painting my bathroom and had changed into my paint stained overall short for the job after the dentist. I spent about 5 hours painting and listening to Air1 radio. I praise God that as His child, I am always, “Dressed well”…in the blood of Jesus with a Robe of righteousness. Nice way to end my day. thanks Renne
Comparison – Sometimes its not a bad thing. Its how we make friends. We compare ourselves to another and decide we have commonalities and pursue becoming friends.
But mostly comparison is for me about more and less. They have more ….Hair, $$, Material goods, degrees, opportunities,are more coordinated, are more fit, or are less overweight, are less impatient, it can go on and on.
Sometimes in comparing – we compare ourselves to ourselves, and we aren’t usually generous or kind with ourselves. I didn’t do as well today. I didn’t get as much done as the other day. I wasn’t as patient with someone as yesterday.
We didn’t do all those things we intended to.
Comparison often leads to envy. I wish I was as much ……or less……I wish I had………..or didn’t have……..
It can be a very dangerous cycle, all that self talk in our heads that we often don’t realize we are saying.
Thank you for this book and this chapter. For helping us to turn away from these thoughts.
It was eye opening to me that I am comparing my insides to another person’s outside. An interior to an exterior, who doe that? The inside of something is never like the outside nor was it mean’t to be. The inside is the substance, the character, personality and unique qualities. I need to remember this for myself and also when looking at others. I only see their outside not the inside which is their unique qualities. Sometimes I forget this and I judge my family members by their outside appearance and it’s then that I need to realize that they are doing the best they can and accept these best efforts.
Thanks for sharing what your friend said about comparing ourselves to others is like comparing our inside to their outside! I am so guilty of that!
I need to be confident in Christ & the woman He created me to be!
I love songs by Mercy Me, but I had not heard that one – thank you so much for sharing!
I am a school nurse and I spent 45 minutes today in the bathroom with a stressed out student. I wish that she could see that beautiful video. I want to send it to her mom but the family is not of the Christian faith, so i will need to talk to mom first I think. Please pray that she will be receptive to viewing this video and your website.
I used to compare myself alot with other women. Thought they were so much more beautiful than I was. After my husband died and God revealed to me that He is my husband and that He loves me so much more, those comparisons became less and less. There are still some days when I see a lovely couple together and compare myself to them. Not having a husband to share things with, but then I remember that God is my husband and He is always listening to me and has time for me.
God has also used the things that I have gone through and the gifts that He has given to me to help others. I mostly have been able to help other women in their struggles in their marriages, and just who they are in God. I have the gifts of counseling and praying for people. I’m known as the go to person who knows what is going on and needs to be done as well. Sometimes that is a good thing and sometimes it is not.
I am just so thankful that God has allowed me the opportunity to struggle and grow with Him through life experiences and that He has allowed me to help others through the things He has taught me.
I’ve had friends tel me, for decades, “you should be a writer!!” I’ve felt drawn in my heart, as well, to write but just don’t know how/where to start. Imagine my joy, bliss,ecstasy today when I read what Renee said in this chapter about her spiritual gifts and the thank you card. Thank you cards are my thing!! Not only do I love to write them…………………………..I create them thru the medium of rubber stamping!! 🙂 Prayng God will “stamp” his plan on my forehead so I will know how to proceed!! Thanks Renee for your courage to step out and write this book. You ARE changing lives!! PTL!!!
I suppose all through grade school and on up through high school i was rediculously and painfully shy. If i could have mushed myself into the cinder block walls and become invisible i would have done it. I was an only child and grew up in a world of adults. Kids scared me and i watched the ones at school and they were mean. I never wanted to be anyone else though, i just wanted everyone to leave me alone. Little Miss Goody Two-shoes they called me, or dinky because i was small. Now i still really don’t have much use for myself. I know God doesn’t make junk but i think i must have been at the end of the line. Now because of medical problems that started 5 years ago, a severely bad back from my neck on down to my hips that makes it impossible to excerise i am 55 lbs overweight and i can’t stand it. I see myself as very ugly, not fearfully and wonderfully made. On the inside maybe but my outside is really screwed up.
I LOVE this Mercy Me song! Just reading those words– loved, precious, sacred, cherised, chosen, beautiful, I am HIS! — washes a calmness and a peace over me. I think I’ll write those words on a notecard and put it on my bathroom mirror. Thank you, and God bless you!
I love the picture in the email you sent. In the last 5 months, I’ve lost my mom to leukemia, my step mom to a heart attack and my dad to melanoma (that was sunday). I really needed to feel loved. Now I do. This book is doing so much for me, teaching me how to be more confident in God and teaching me more about God’s Word. I am growing closer to God each day.
I have been searching for me. I married @ age 17, quit school, got mt GED, had my 1st child before turning 18. By age 24 I had 4 kids. I have been married for 17 yrs. I love my kids & have always been a stay at home mom. I was ok with it. But, now that my kids are getting older, I feel I’m having an identity crisis. I’m almost 35, next week, and I have NO idea who I am. This chapter is very helpful. I just pray God will reveal my identity as I feel empty. I never had a chance to ‘find myself’ at an age most girls do. I feel to old now…but I know God made me for a reason. I just need to figure out what it is. 🙂
I almost forgot! That song so spoke to my heart! I felt like dancing around my room! My daughter woke up this morning and said good morning beautiful! I said good morning pretty! I thought that is new why did she say that. I really like that! I opened my email tonight and there is this wonderful song. I had my daughter come listen we both are putting that on our ipods right now! I AM BEAUTIFUL! I am just so thankful for the nuggets of God that you share Renee. You are awesome in Christ and I am seeing that I am too through His eyes!
I really enjoyed Chapter 8. I thought back to how God led me to find my gifts years ago and yet now I amint a new place in my life of finding where to use my gifts and this was perfect. I am feeling God doing a “new thing” in my life and through this study. Taking an assessment in the pastwas good for where I was then but you know what? That was the past and there are so many things God has for me that I am finally open to trying and doing. I am the kind of person that learns something and wants to stick to it instead of branching out. I can now see and feel myself when I am fighting change. I was reading some of the characteristics and I saw where it said you do things out of obligation or because you are supposed to. I looked long and hard at that and many times I do that! I am starting fresh and glad to be. This book has helped me tremendously and I cant thank Renee enough. I love new in Christ! He really does make everything new in its time! August Rose
I must first thank you so much for your blogs and emails. I received the email for this blog at a time today that I was literally about to walk out of my job. I happened to check my email and this was in my inbox. It had the desired effect of calming me down. I have been really struggling at work lately with a lot of negativity and extra work loads. I am usually easy going and I can multitask like no one’s business, and that has helped me in so many areas of my life. I feel God calling me to do something different but I can’t figure out what it is. I have so much going on that I am praying for peace and stillness for Him to guide me to what He wants me to do. I have found that during these trouble times that I am having that reading your blog, P31, and/or Lysa’s blog I feel calmer. I always stand amazed at how God works and how he puts just the right thing in my inbox or since I subscribe to your updates via text, I receive an encouraging text just when I need it and pertaining to something that is happening in my life. Thank YOU for using your God given talents and helping us out!
Thank you for your ministry to women. I have failed to follow God ‘s leading in so many phases of my life. I see other women who seem so confident and positive in their lives and just want to be so much like them I often seek music as a calming, consoling escape and I am thankful for the song you posted . I am made for so much more. Thankful that God has not given up on me.
I absolutely LOVE that song. God often uses music to reach deep into my heart, and this song is a grab-it-and-don’t-let-go example. The greatest thing is that I’ve heard this song many times, but today was the day God chose to reveal Himself to me through it. He really is in control, and knows what we need and when to send it to us. Thanks soooo much for sharing it.
So glad it spoke to your heart like it did mine!
I had a bad day today. Spent much time looking for financial papers that I needed. Went to my mother’s condo (she recently passed away) and found many crickets in her storage closet. Argued with a sibling. And worst of all, I received a rejection on an article that I had written on speculation for a magazine. That last item made me question, “Why do I think I’m called to be a writer?” Then I read the “You’re One of A Kind” post and my day got a whole lot better. I look forward to finding out my spiritual gifts. Thank you.
Sooo sorry about your really hard day, Praying for you Sue!!!
I’m 43 and burned out leading a children’s ministry, even though I thought organization was “my thing”. I long to be all I can as a wife and mother. I haven’t read the entire Chap 8 yet, but was just wondering this morning about asking what books and assessments Renee was talking about. Thank you for the opportunity to win one. But most of all, thank you for your wonderful ministry and book. I know it’s blessing me, as well as the ladies in my Sunday Bible study, as I share some of your encouraging insights.
I took the spiritual gift assessment. The first time I took one was over twenty years ago. I’ve taken one other before now. No matter how much I experience life, and grow, and change, my spiritual gifts remain constant! Same gifts, different applications. Made me smile and think, the Spirit is the same, yesterday, today, and forever.
I encourage everyone to take the assessment. Rejoice in the gifts you’ve been given, and don’t sweat the low scores! God’s got someone else covering those areas. 🙂
I agree, LeAnne! Everyone should take the assessment! I’ve taken a personality assessment in a psychology class, but never a spiritual gift assessment such as this – I was pleasantly surprised! 🙂
Loved the music video….really reminded me “how much more” we really are…..than we think ourselves to be. Powerful words describe us: treasured, chosen, loved, sacred, His!!!! We need to remember that next time we find ourselves comparing, or feeling unloved. Thanks as always for the encouragement Renee!
I have been on a journey for the past 2 years of healing. I still struggle with feeling like what I have to offer is not valuable or important. I would love to discover who god meant me to be and where I am supposed to fit and serve the body.
Thank you Renee! I also compare myself to others. It’s so amazing to think I am constantly a work in progress to be more like Him every day. It humbles me to think that He looks at me and sees true beauty, I’m exactly where He wants me to be and my worth is more than rubies! I am unique and that’s the way He wants it!
How great is our God!
I confess I always thought that when those at church spoke of spiritual gifts, it was just a way to get volunteers. I feel bad about that now. I see that being created in Christs image means so much more than my human form, it means giving of myself, as Christ gave of himself, as his disciples gave of themselves. And when I was born again, as Renee says in her book, Christ gave me the gift he had been waiting so long to give me, my spiritual talent. It seems a hard gift to unwrap however, and I have been saved for years, although if I am to be honest I just went along doing my “Christian duty”, and never really letting it all sink into my heart. I wanted it to, but I didn’t know how. I see now that I wasn’t going to be struck by a lightning bolt, and it wasn’t going to just going to spontaneously happen without me doing my part. I had to make God’s word something that I took to heart, believe His promises. I had to talk to Him in a whole different way, a way I never had before, not as a divinity that I couldn’t really get close to, or wasn’t worthy of being close to, but as a Father who truely loves me! Having had problems with my earthly Father it was hard to do that, but I have finally forgiven those in my past, and forgiven myself for my part. Once I had asked for forgiveness for myself and from those I could, and telling God I forgave those that had passed on, it all changed. I felt a weight lifted off of me, so much hurt and anger taken away, I also felt at peace with my own father who had passed on, and able to fully love my heavenly Father. I am ready now to unwrap more of my spiritual gift to see what God wants me to do as a part of the body. I also feel worthy, loved, and ready to allow myself to let God love me fully, to talk to my Father like a daughter should, and to do my best to make my Daddy proud! Thank you for the beautiful video today Renee, it really helped drive home how much my Daddy does love me! I am still unsure of how to find my spiritual gift, and could use some help in unwraping it, so if I am blessed with the book, I would be delighted! If not, I will not stop searching though. I am inspired more than ever before to find my gift now! 🙂
Esther- good to see you on here again. I’ve been thinking alot about this chapter like we all have. I know I have the gift of enouragement. God impressed me with this thought that we are all very loved and precious ‘daddy’s girls” because we are HIS girls. Hope this encourages you and the rest of the ACH sisters like it does me!
Hi Dallena! Good to see you here again too! 🙂 I took the test Renee had, and I got Administration, and then by one point less, and all tied, Exhortation (“This is the spiritual gift where the Spirit enables certain Christians to deliver challenging and encouraging words.”), Faith (“This is the spiritual gift where the Spirit provides Christians with great confidence to believe and expect great things from God”.), and Wisdom (This is the spiritual gift where the Spirit empowers particular Christians with a supernatural understanding of God’s Word and the will to apply it to life situations.”). I don’t know how I got any of these really other than Administration, which is what I did as a career for years. I don’t quite know what to do with all of this. I need to pray on it, and think of what God wants me to do with the information, and if I do have those gifts, what I can do with each of them to bless others, and please God as a part of the church body. I really have to wonder about wisdom as one of my gifts, as I have never felt I had a “supernatural” understanding of God’s Word. I have even doubted at times if I was doing Bible studies I was in the right way! It was a good test though, and I tried to be very honest in my answers.
Thanks for the encouragement Dallena (I think you are right about your gift :)! Hope you have a blessed week! 🙂
I have never thought about it in that way of comparing myself to someone else until I read the devotional today. I think a lightbulb went off. My head knows all of the things that God says about me, but my heart doesn’t always allow me to believe it. I’m looking foward to the online study and I’m anticipating more ways that my heart will accept the truth. Thank you so much for today’s word from God
It is so true that the most important thing I need to remember is that God cares about me. It doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks of me or says about me ~ His love is all I need! Thank you so much for your inspiring posts and sharing your heart with us through this study.
I need to remember that God DOES care about me. Even though I’m not starving, have a roof over my head, a loving family, wonderful friends…all the blessings of life, He STILL cares about what’s on my heart. Now I just need to figure out how to listen for His voice in the midst of all the other “stuff” in my head and heart…
I lose every time I compare my inside and outside with another’s outside. I’m 54 and still struggle with comparisons. I am slow but sure learning to see myself as God sees me.
My, my, my! I watch this video and I see my face in every face that appears there. Every emotion that they portray I have felt this week and am feeling again right now with tears streaming down my face. I have written before about the 22 year marriage I threw away because of a decision based on “feelings” and the 3 year relationship that I’m in now where a marriage commitment seems to be nowhere in sight. This past Sunday my boyfriend and I were with is family celebrating a special birthday. Family everywhere; most of which I know and they know me. Many expect me to be present during these family functions as does he. He and I were talking and somehow we got on the subject of a female he started to hook up with before me. He said she had told him she wanted a HUSBAND and his reply was well she’d picked the wrong man cause he was hardly trying to get married. When the words came out of his mouth I could have sunk through the sofa I was sitting on. Three years of my life I have dedicated to this man. And marriage is not even a consideration??? At that moment I felt like I had no strength; right then I felt like I was not worth anything. I wanted to get up and walk out but of course we’d come together and he’d drove and home was quite a distance away but the rest of the entire evening was just a blur to me. I tried to mask my feelings but several people asked what’s wrong?? Is everything all right with you? I was heart broken; I’m still heart broken and I’m at the point now where I’m asking God should I just end it now before I waste more of my time. But I love him, I love his family and I don’t want to give any of it up. I don’t want to have to start all over again building a new relationship and learning someone new. The sad thing about all of this is that I know he loves me but he is still wounded from his first failed marriage. He too needs to have a confident heart. I want to keep this video and play it over and over and over again until I can stop the pain, I am made for so much more than all of this
The Comparison Trap devotional really spoke to me today. It is funny how much more I identified with it when I you mentioned what you looked like – fair skin and freckles, I identified with this message even more as during the middle school years I was teased for those things as well. Sometimes it is things we find in others that are similar are what draws us towards them or their point of view. I suppose this is a form of comparing also.
But I love the message that your friend shared with you about how we compare our insides with the other persons outsides! This is so true and sounds silly when you think about it this way.
This was a great message!