Why Do You Doubt?

No one is immune to doubt. It happens to us a,k. You’ve Judy got to know how to handle it when it comes. Even the greatest men and women of God recorded in the Bible had to deal with doubt. Jesus said John the Baptist.

Most certainly I tell you, among those who are born of women there has not arisen anyone greater than John the Immerser; yet he is least in the Kingdom of Heaven, is greater than he.

Matthew 11:11

That means John was greater in the sight of Jesus than Abraham, Joseph, Moses, David, or any Old Testament character you can name. Yet John doubted the most important thing of all by questioning whether Jesuswas really the Messiah.

John the Baptist had been cast into prison for criticizing Herod about marrying his brother’s wife, an incestuous relationship. He had been there sometime between six months and two years and became so discouraged that he asked two of his disciples to go to Jesus and ask Him if He was the Christ. It’s easy to read that and not think much about it, but the truth is, it was nothing but unbelief on the part of John the Baptist.

Think about who John was. He was separated unto God and filled with the Holy Spirit while he was still in the womb. Even Jesus wasn’t filled with the Holy Spirit from the womb. It is believed he lived in the desert near the Dead Sea with the Essens, the writers of the Dead Sea Scrolls. They are alegalistic people who were super-legalistic who dogmatically practiced many rituals of self-denial. He certainly had not lived what we would call an easy life. John was separated and focused on his purpose.

His entire life was committed to preparing the way for the Christ. He spent 30- years preparing for a ministry that would only last six short months. John is the one who saw Jesus and said, “Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world” ( John 1:29). The anointing on his life had to be exceptionally powerful because his ministry defied logic. Thousands of people from many nations came to the middle of no where to hear this man preach, “Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” And God had revealed to him that through a visible sign from heaven he would know who the Christ was. He would see the Spirit of God descending upon the Messiah in bodily shape as a dove. That came to pass when John baptized Jesus in the Jordan River.

At that time, John was absolutely certain that Jesus was the Christ. He had no zero doubt. He was so adamant about it that he said,

“I saw, and bare record that this is the Son of God” in John 1:34. In Luke 3:16 he said, “One mightier than I come the, the latchet of shoes I am not worthy to unloose.” And in John 3:30 he said, “He must increase, but I must decrease.

However, after being imprisoned for a period of time, he began to doubt. This says a number of things, but an important one is the fact that anyone can doubt. How did Jesus respond to John’s doubt? Well, He certainly didn’t respond the way most of us do. He told John’s disciples to go back and the him of the miracles they had witnessed and the John would be blessed if he would just believe. That’s it. Jesus didn’t try and make John feel better by letting him know He understood his pain or by making a few complimentary comments . Jesus reserved those comments until after John’s disciples left (Luke 7:24-28).

This confused me for many years. Why didn’t Jesus say these things about John the Baptist in the hearing of John’s disciples so they could have brought him that word? It seemed to me like that would have helped John more than just telling him to look at the miracles, and he’ll be blessed if he believes.

Then I read Isaiah 35 and came across the scripture that says,

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert.

Isaiah 35:5-6

It suddenly struck me that this was exactly the answer that Jesus gave John’s messages. Look at what Jesus said in Matthew 11:4-6:

Jesus answered and said unto them, Go and shew John again those things which do hear and see: The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me.

Matthew 11:4-6

Jesus performed all the miracles Isaiah prophesied He would do, and threw in the healing of a leper and raising someone from the dead just for good measure. What Jesus did was He perfectly fulfilled the prophecy about Himself, and then referred John the Baptist back to that word. Jesus reminded John of the scriptures, to deal with his doubts. That’s Jesus’s method to dealing with our doubts.

Many of us have Bibles lying around gathering dust, Some of us even carry one with us. But when we’re struggling with unbelief , we don’t want scripture; we want something tangible, something emotional that we can feel. We would rather have Jesus just put His arm around us and say “Everything will be all right.” That would make us feel better. But overcoming doubt isn’t just about feeling better; it’s about getting back into faith that only comes from the Word of God (Romans 10:17).

Maybe there’s a reason the Lord hasn’t used an emotional touch to deliver you from unbelief. Maybe it’s because He loves you so much that He’s trying to help you operate in the highest form of faith- faith that takes Him at His Word. If the least today are greater than John the Baptist was (Matthew 11:11), surely the Lord is wanting us to operate on at least the same level in which He dealt with John’s unbelief.

Steps To Take When Your Running On Empty

There’s a funny thing about burnout – it can happen when you’re bored, when your not doing anything new, when your feeling lonely, or after a failure or setback.

Burnout can also happen when you’re at the top of your game, working hard, successful, and feeling in the flow with things.

Grant yourself some understanding and empathy about why burnout happens.

Here are some steps to take when you feel like you’re running on empty:

1. Hit The Reset Button

This first step is to chalk in on how you came to be empty. Use HALT to ask yourself:

  • Am I hungry?
  • Am I anxious?
  • Am I lonely?
  • Am I tired?

Deficiencies of sleep, fueling your body with healthy foods, social connections, or stress can all affect your ability to function optimally. Solving these problems is key. Putting quality food into your system and allowing ample rest time are simple.

Loneliness can happen even when you are surrounded by people. Being lonely doesn’t come from being alone; it comes from not feeling a sense of belonging or being heard by those around you. If you aren’t surrendering yourself with people who inspire you, challenge you, and help you to stay motivated, it may be time to make some changes.

Anxiety floods your body with chemicals that hijack a part of your brain that allows for planning and good decision making (amygdala). This is useful if you must fight ninjas or run away from a tiger, but it’s not so useful when your stuck in traffic or about to speak in public.

Burnout can be the reaction to prolonged stress and one of the best antidotes to stress is meditation. If you need an immediate boost, take some long deep breaths for 90 seconds to disrupt the fight-or-flight pattern your body had initiated. Later, you can make a plan to incorporate meditation into your day in order to keep anxiety and stress levels low. I find that reading helps also.

2. Check in on your sense of purpose

People who identify a source of meaning and purpose in their life’s report greater life satisfaction. They also have higher levels of both physical and mental health, higher levels of resistance, and a greater sense of control. If your feeling a lack of any of these, you may need to check in and see if you’re still aligned with your purpose.

3. Make sure your burnout isn’t coming from comparison

There can be an upside and a downside to comparisons. Seeing the good in other people’s lives can be a motivator; however, people are also able to construct identities that show their highlight reel without giving you an inside peek at the process.

You don’t see the mistakes along the way, the false alerts, the failures, and the tough times, are all as important as the end product that is usually what is posted on social media. If you’re comparing your rough first draft to someone’s highlight reel you’re always going to come up feeling badly. If you catch yourself comparing yourself to anyone but yourself, STOP,

4. Assess your levels of self-compassion

It has been said that compassion is incomplete if it doesn’t extend to yourself, We are often hardest and most critical of ourselves. Notice hoe you speak to yourself.

Try using the carrot and the stick method. Ask yourself would you speak to a friend or a colleague the way you are speaking to yourself? If not start to be kind to you. Go for a massage, take a walk, Celebrate your successes. These reminder will help keep burnout a bay.

5. Use a quick fix to turn around the negative downward spiral

Think of well-being as either spiraling up or spiraling down. There are some quick fixes that can help you begin the process of changing a bad mood to a good mood or burnout to ease. The smell center and the auditory center are both right next to the pleasure center. This means you can use a good smell or a favorite song to help get back in the game when you would rather stay on the bench.

Feeling burned out is your body telling you something. When your body is in balance it tells you to rest when it needs rest and it pushes forward when it has a purpose and energy, Learn to listen to your body. Your jobs, your friends, your family, and your goals can get in the way of accurately seeing your levels of energy, engagement, and resilience. When you feel depleted, instead of vowing if as a weakness, use it as an opportunity to reassess and then move forward in a way that supports your continued ability to flourish.

Get Off Someday Island

So many people live on someday island. You’ve probably heard yourself or someone else say someday:

  • Someday I’ll lose weight
  • Someday I will take a trip are
  • Someday I’ll have a house of my own

Someday island is where all of our dreams live, all the things we want to do someday…unfortunately for most of us, that day never comes. But Why? Because they’re dreams not goals,

Do you know the difference between a dream and a goal?

I dream is a goal without a time limit. Do you have goals or do you have dreams? If you have dreams and not goals, you may be stuck on the someday Island.

Take out you were with your dreams and prioritize them. Start with the most important one and set a new date for when you’d like to achieve them. Wake up the larger ones into smaller goals that you can achieve a steps to for fulfilling the larger one.

Are you going to stick around someday island or are you going somewhere? All it takes to get off the island if you set a deadline to that during, take the first step, and you’re on the path to reaching that goal.

Do you have a list of dreams without deadlines? How often do you sit down and revise your list? What would it take to get you to set priorities and dates for your dreams?

Powerful Promises Of God

“He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty” Psalm 91:1

We may not always see it, or feel it, we might forget it’s there at times, or even wonder if He’s left us to fend for ourselves in the heat of hard situations of life. But His protection is real. He doesn’t, He can’t forget us or ignore us. If we belong to Him, His love is too great ti leave us on our own.

The Meaning Of Psalm 91

Is it any coincidence that this is the 9-1-1 verse? In whatever troubles we find ourselves in. God is the place of refuge we can run to, He is our safe place.

The word “dwell” use in this verse actually means “to take up permanent residence in.” He reminds us to stay in His presence, for iris a permanent place of living. His Word says if we do that,we will rest in the very shadow of the Almighty. Shadows by definition are a plate of protection and covering, they provide relief from the direct heat of the sun. If the heat is severe, the shade is the place we run to. It diminishes what we actually feel in the intensity of the heat.

A reminder for us, especially in during the tough stuff, that we never walk alone. Full heat a troubles bearing down hard, heavy, it’s a struggle at times to keep trudging through it all. Pressure and stress can seem as stifling add a hot afternoon summer sun. Yet God whispers the truth, strong and sure, “Walk in my shadow, up close to our side.” It’s in the safe place that brings confidence, or when we are resting in God shadow, we will never face before heat of our difficulties. He shelters from the pain. He shade, His shadow, diminishes what is actually felt in the intensity of the heat. Rest, peace and calm rise up strong, right in the struggling mess of life, are we are assured, He’s in control.

Sometimes, maybe unintentionally, in the busyness or difficulties of living, we might strive to survive on our own. We forget that what we need most, God protection in the comfort of His presence, are freely available to those who love Him and walk under His covering.

The entire chapter of Psalm 91 is filled with the goodness and power of God. Great me reminders that He faithfully works on behalf of those who love Him. And that the end of it all, God gives reasons why do you not have to fear.

He promises: “Because he loves me says the Lord, I will rescue him; I will protect him, or he acknowledges my name. He will call on me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in times of trouble, I will deliver him and honor him. With long life I will satisfy him and show him my salvation” (Psalm 91:14-16).

Promises From God In Psalm 91

  • “I will rescue him…” (deliver him, cause to escape).
  • “I will protect him…” (set him on a high place.)
  • “I will answer him…” (respond to, speak.)
  • “I will be with him in trouble…” (in affliction and distress.)
  • “I will deliver him…” (rescue, to bring into safety.)
  • “And honor him…” (to make heavy with honor.)
  • “ with long life I will satisfy him…” ( to have abundance in the journey.)
  • “And show him my salvation…” (let him see my deliverance and victory.)

Please great blessings as we seek after God, and choose to walk in His ways, In the mist of grape darkness in this world, living in it all without His truth and freedom, would be like wallowing in the pit. Not much hope to be found there. The truth is, this world has been dark for generations, since sin first entered the Earth at the hiss of the enemies lies.

Yet God’s reminders are sure, strong, and true, assuring us that in all that we walk through in this journey, His call is always to rise above. He reminds us we are not alone. And though He never says that we won’t be hard times, He does say He’ll be with us in it, rescuing us, and shining His favor over us.

Don’t ever doubt it. God works on behalf of those who love Him and honor His name, he is so good to us. We may never fully know, this side of heaven, how very much He has sheltered us from in this life.

Overcoming Insecurities

There isn’t a person among us who doesn’t have insecurities, some are just better at dealing with them, or perhaps hiding them.

We worry what other people think about us, we worry if we’re good enough, we worry that we’re not doing all we should be doing, we worried that we will fail. We worried that we are too fat, too short, Worry if they like us,

And social media, with its culture of getting us who want approval with likes and shares, with it showing off amazing bodies in amazing travels and food… it only exacerbates the problem. But you know all this

The question is how can we overcome these insecurities?

How do we become okay with ourselves? How do we learn to find contentment and peace?

The answer isn’t simple, but it requires one thing to start with: a willingness to your face what we usually don’t want to face.

That means a bit of courage, do you have small doses, to start with but it means willingness to set aside all the distractions for a little while, I’m just focusing on what you were struggling with.

Do you have courage? If so, let’s begin.

Obstacles

What gets in our way with dealing with insecurities? There are obstacles littering our path. There are old wounds that have never healed.

Here are a few obstacle that seem to get in the way:

Past Criticisms

If a parent or other relatives criticize us while we are growing up, or if we were bowling, we probably internalize that. My dad always seem to accept me as I was, but my mother had her own insecurities, and those would manifest as criticism. Those criticism stayed in my head, but they are beginning to die down because of the work that I have done. Still they never really go away.

A Negative Self-Image

When people criticize you over the years, you start to criticize yourself. And all this criticism, along with unfavorable comparisons of ourselves to others, result in a self image that isn’t so great. it doesn’t matter if the reality doesn’t meet this self-image… we can be competent, brilliant, and beautiful, but if we have an image of ourselves that is ugly, dumb, and a failure, we act accordingly to the image.

Needing Approval

When someone gives us approval, that’s great. We feel we are worthy and beautiful. But then the problem becomes that we need more and more approval to keep this self image, We fear not getting the approval because then this self-image won’t go away. Will you become stuck in a cycle of needing constant approval, and fearing disapproval. We read into everything that everyone says and does, in real life and on social media, in terms of approval or disapproval. This becomes a fearful cycle of need.

Lack Of Trust

We learn not to trust other people just stick with us, to accept us, to see our side of things at understandable. This has trained us over the years as people to do things that we think of and abandonment or rejection, we stopped trusting in the moment to turn out right.

Images Of Social Media And Media

We compare ourselves to the great people when see in media, or social media. We compare ourselves to the hot people in movies, televisions, and magazines. These images are meant to sell us, but the way they sell us is by making us feel insecure about ourselves, and then needing whatever it is that the celebrities are selling us in order for us to be as good as them.

Not Accepting Things About Ourselves

In the end, the result is that we reject large parts of ourselves. We don’t like that we are overweight, or have pimples, or something about our bodies. It’s amazing, because even people who think they have amazing bodies reject things about their bodies. We also reject parts of our inner cells, the parts that are undisciplined or uncaring or fearful or lazy. We reject the parts of ourselves that are insecure.

Those are a lot of obstacles to deal with. And that highlight why this takes courage, and why the fix isn’t easy.

The Road To Dealing With Insecurities

Here’s the secret: The obstacles actually show us the path. The obstacles are the path.

We can embrace the obstacles and work with them but in order to do that we need to start to develop an awareness of when our insecurities are rising. We can use them as a mindfulness alarm, ring when we are trouble with my fears and mistrust, telling us, “There’s so much material to work with you.”

And that’s the key: All of our insecurities are actually an opportunity to do some good work, to learn about how we work, to develop skills that will help us in life.

Start to pay attention, notice when you are being driven by insecurity. And then focus on the following work:

  • Forgive the past. If your insecurities have been shaped by a relative or authoritative figures criticizing you, recognize this. Then you can start to forgive them. Understand that if they were driven by their own insecurities, struggling with their own demons . They behave in perfectly, but we all do. They weren’t right in the what they did, but you can understand it none the less. It’s hard to forgive someone for their bad behavior, but holding onto resentment isn’t helping you. Let go of the past, one step at a time.
  • Accept all of yourself. Pause and take a self-assessment. Notice the parts of yourself, both your body and your inner self, that you don’t like. Take a moment to look at these parts of you, and see if you can send them love. See them for the imperfect parts of you that they are, deserving of love as a friend who is in perfect also deserves love. Think about how your treat is imperfect friend, and be the same way toward yourself. Give yourself assurance, do you have your self compassion. Embrace all the parts of you, and see the beauty in them. They are what make you who you are, and they are wonderful.
  • Practice self approval. if you notice you were so wanting someone else’s approval, your praise and attention, their likes and shares…pause and replace it with self approval. You can take away the power of others to approve you if you appropriate that power for yourself. You don’t need anyone else’s approval but your own. That doesn’t mean you don’t want a connection with others, or love, but you can love others and be loved by them while also giving your self approval. Accept yourself, completely, love yourself, that is all you need.
  • Embrace non-comparison. Comparison of yourself with how others look, what they are doing, where they are traveling, and how much fun they’re having is never a useful comparison, and it actively harms you. Instead, when you see someone else, instead of comparing yourself to them, see them as apples to your oranges. Be happy that they are having fun, be joyful for their successes. They are come on a completely different path from you, and they can be happy and have a great time and you can too, on your own path. See their awesomeness is different from yours.
  • Develop trust in the moment. Through all the practices, dark develop a crush in yourself that everything will be okay. Develop a crush in the moment that it will unfold and all will be well. This develops overtime, by making small predictions about the moment it might even help to say to yourself in the moment everything will be all right and then seeing if the prediction comes true.

This is the path. You will find things you are struggling with, and learn to work with them. Learn to shift your perspective. Learn to see what’s tripping you up, and turn it into an opportunity to practice your skills.

It is a journey. It has helped me to become more accepting of myself, and trust myself more. And turn, it helps me learn to love myself and others more, one moment at a time.