My head is never silent.  No, I don't hear voices - but I do constantly think in such a way that I could easily go off the deep end one of these days if I were to let it get that far.  Everything is in fast forward, then fast rewind, then fast forward again.  I replay every word, motion, act and look in my mind without even trying.  It's torturous.  What others may not even remember, I intensely regret and feel shame over.  Did I laugh too loud?  Did I stand in such a way that I brought attention to my endless list of imperfections?  Did I sing off key on Sunday?  Am I too prideful?  Am I doing what I'm supposed to be doing?  Is my boss mad at me because I'm not working fast enough?  Do people smile at me and then roll their eyes or shake their head when I walk away?  Most of the time I wonder if I'm ever really going to get this walk of faith - being a follower of Christ. 

This past Sunday, my pastor preached on spiritual warfare.  He stated that only 48% of non-denominational Christians believe that Satan exists.  Less than half of us believe that we have an enemy?  He stared right at us and made sure we heard the words.  "You have a real enemy." 

As I sat there, I was thinking to myself, "Of course I have an enemy!  Don't I know it!"  But as he began to preach, I realized that while I may know I have an enemy, I've been pretty bad at recognizing him when he was at work.  Satan is acutely aware of my weaknesses and ever since I've been back in church and getting involved in ministry again, he has made sure that I am faced with them on a daily basis.  I have read the Bible and get encouragement from it, but in the meantime, I have been absorbing Satan's attacks instead of thwarting them.  Over the years, I have allowed Satan to coil around my mind - to the point that I hear his lies in my head and claim them as my own truth.

Now when I say weaknesses, I don't mean things like thinking bad thoughts about my co-worker (yes I do that) or being irritated with my husband for no reason (boy do I EVER do that) or disrespecting my parents (they could share all the ways I've done this for sure) - but I mean desperate weakness. 

Addiction is the top of the list.  I have an addictive personality - bunk.  I have allowed myself to be controlled by my need for instant gratification - truth.

Anger management is an oxy moron for me.  But I'm Scottish and it runs in my blood - bunk.  I've allowed my own selfish desires to control me so that I do whatever it takes to make myself heard - truth. 

Depression is a daily battle for me.  It runs in my family and I can't help it - bunk.  I serve a living God who will either carry me through the storm or completely deliver me - truth.

Why am I being so candid?  Why risk exposing my weaknesses so that others may try to judge me?  Because my weaknesses are not how I am defined.  Addiction, anger and depression are not who I am.  Who I am is a child of God - reborn and resurrected.  Standing in the fire with me is my God.  It is my God who supplies all my needs according to His glory.  It is my God who delivers me from sorrow and depression.  It is my God who calms me and allows me to see those I am angry with through His eyes.  It is my God who I am defined by and who exposes the enemy for the liar he is.

Satan is dirty and tricky and wants you to believe that you are defined by your weaknesses.  That is his greatest lie.  If he can make you believe that you are not worthy of a Savior because of who you are - then he will win.  If he can make you think that you are worthless and a quitter by nature, then he will win.  But hear this - God does not stand for His children being attacked.  He knows who you are - you're His.  He is protective and alert for His children.  But He will not force Himself on you.  He is waiting for you to simply say "Lord take me for who I am."  And He does.  Our sin is laid at His feet and we can resist Satan knowing the power that we have behind us.  This doesn't mean that everything you struggle with will disappear.  The Apostle Paul himself struggled with sin and it tormented him.  He asked God repeatedly to take away the "thorn" in his flesh, the sin, that he dealt with.  God's response was this:  "My grace is sufficient for you - my power is made perfect in weakness."  (2 Corinthians 12:9) But our sinful nature will not last - God has promised this.

So will I ever get this walk of faith?  Will I ever understand what it means to be a follower of Christ?  I can say that yes, I will on both counts, because I do know who I am.

Psalm chapter 18 is a powerful example of a man, David, who even in all his sin knows who he is and who he belongs to.  I'll close my first blog with this:

 The LORD is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer;
 my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge.
 He is my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.

 I call to the LORD, who is worthy of praise,
 and I am saved from my enemies.

 The cords of death entangled me;
 the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me.

 The cords of the grave coiled around me;
 the snares of death confronted me.

 In my distress I called to the LORD;
 I cried to my God for help.
 From His temple He heard my voice;
 my cry came before Him, into his ears...

...He reached down from on high and took hold of me;
 He drew me out of deep waters.

 He rescued me from my powerful enemy,
 from my foes, who were too strong for me.

 They confronted me in the day of my disaster,
 but the LORD was my support.

 He brought me out into a spacious place;
 He rescued me because He delighted in me.

Psalm 18: 1-6, 17-19

I won't even go into our discussion about "being rich towards God". :-)

I am watching a movie that is deeply moving.  It feels like he is searching for mental health.  Staying true to himself.

I just finished the movie.  He searched for freedom from his pain, and to search for happiness.  I think what he found is that we are happiest when we are in love with those that we are closest to, and when we accept our true selves.

I have spent a lot of time in my life, even until this moment, hating myself.  I fight against who I am tooth and nail.  I long to "change".  To be someone other than myself.  I apologize all of the time for who I am right now. 

What would happen if I just said, "I love you just the way you are.  If you never change I will still love you just as deeply, just as thoroughly.  You are mine and I cherish you.  Don't fight who you are.  Don't close yourself off from me.  Don't try to feel something that you don't.  Just be."

I am a child of God.  He knit me together just as I am. 

One of my personal mending shifts I have been trying to work on lately is fighting my internal need to label people. What I am finding is how deeply ingrained and automatic this habit really is. Recently, I have began to view not-labeling as a spiritual practice; one in which I try to see a person simply as a child whom God loves. When I practice this, I look at a person and as the labels fly into my mind at light speed I acknowledge them and then mentally try to discard them. Yesterday, this practice was really put to the test.

I had an appointment at the welfare office (yes, you read it correctly, but that's another story). As I sat there waiting for my name to be called, I looked at the people surrounding me. Identifying and categorizing labels came flooding in— Elderly, white, Hispanic, poor, male, female, black, cute, ugly, well dressed—and no matter how hard I tried, I could not dispose of them. I instantly, within seconds, neatly categorized everyone in that room—Bamm! Done! If I were really honest, I saw them more according to the imposed labels then as a child of God whom he loves. I really tried, but it proved too difficult. That is until she showed up...

As I sat there by myself, surrounded by labels, she appeared from around a square column that was supporting the room. She walked with laughter and the smile on her face was priceless. She was a real cutie. Dark hair, about 3'2" tall, and around 2 years old. I instantly saw her as a child of God whom he loves. Then a piercing question hit me: Why is it so easy for me to see—without labels—a cute child simply as someone whom God loves and so difficult to see an adult that way? Why does 40 years of aging effect my view of God's kids so much? Why do I categorize and label them, but simply see her for who she is? After all, in reality, doesn't God see us—you and me—like I saw that little girl? I sat there and quietly let God's message sink into my heart.

Then I began to look around at the adults again. This time, I began to see them as God's kids whom he loves. But I also saw more. I saw kids who were sad, wounded, lonely, scared (and scarred), beat down, and hurting. I saw, in part, the effect those 40 years of life had on them and my heart broke—it simply broke. As it did, I thanked my Father for the generous gift he just gave my heart.

And so my journey and my practice of trying not to label people—simply seeing them as children whom God loves—continues on. As it does, I hope that I can resist the need to label myself and simply see me as one of his, whom he loves.

May you too—'Cause you are, and he does!

by William Gay
(Anchor Canada; PB; $22.00)

“…he climbed up a chimney to a corridor above the stream and entered into a tall and bellshaped cavern. Here the walls with their softlooking convolutions, slavered over as they were with wet and bloodred mud, had an organic look to them, like the innards of some great beast. Here in the bowels of the mountain Ballard turned his light on ledges or pallets of stone where dead people lay like saints..”

Cormac McCarthy; Child of God

The comparisons are inevitable.

Two southern writers, both of whom employ lyrical, macabre prose to delineate the wicked hearts of people inhabiting places far from the lights of the city, an outer darkness where ordinary rules don’t apply.

Rather than shy away from any association with his celebrated colleague, Mr. Gay acknowledges and embraces it, to the extent that he quotes from McCarthy’s Suttree—“The rest indeed is silence”—to begin the second half of Twilight.

The similarities are there but Gay’s worldview is nowhere near as dense, unrelenting and hopeless as McCarthy’s. McCarthy is a poet, his method studied, deliberate, his word choices rich and sinuous but always scrupulously measured and metered; Gay practically gushes:

“The wagon came out of the sun with its attendant din of iron rims turning on flinty shale, its worn silvergray fired orange by the malefic light flaring behind it, the driver disdaining the road for the shortcut down the steep incline, erect now and sawing the lines, riding the brake onehanded until the wheels locked and skidded, then releasing it so that wagon and team and man moved in a constantly varying cacophony of shrieks and rattles and creaks and underlying it all the perpetual skirling of steel on stone.”

-opening sentence of Twilight (italics in the original)

Gay’s Granville Sutter finds his closest fictional relative in McCarthy’s oeuvre in Lester Ballard, from the aforementioned Child of God. Both kill without remorse and don’t shy away from the bloody part of the business. There is much to fear from a man who is capable of terrible deeds, acting without flinching, proceeding without so much as a backward glance. Such a man is to be avoided and you certainly wouldn’t want one as an enemy…

Corrie and Kenneth Tyler finds themselves in Sutter’s murderous sights owing to a combination of bad judgement, a desire for vengeance and, it must be said, a certain amount of plain, old fashioned greed. They stumble across the grisly postmortem shenanigans of the town’s resident undertaker, Fenton Breece. Breece likes to ah, tamper with the cadavers he has access to in his professional capacity. Corrie is determined to make the mortician pay for interfering with her father’s body and inflicting all manner of macabre indignities on his helpless clients.

The first twenty or thirty pages of Twilight make for tough sledding as the evil that Breece is enacting is revealed to the reader. Corrie convinces her reluctant brother to help her extort money from Breece and it’s at that point that Sutter is called in, charged with the job of putting an end to the blackmail.

The second section of the book is a protracted chase scene. There’s too much foreshadowing of Sutter’s eventual fate and I never quite figured out his odd fixation with Kenneth Tyler. The roots of the connection remain undisclosed and, to my mind, quite unfathomable.

Twilight is a dark book, not only in terms of the disturbing imagery but also in its depiction of the backwoods people, the bleak secrets they harbour, the corruption that engenders. They are a hard and mean bunch, seasoned by grim fortune, embittered rather than ennobled by suffering and privation. Young Kenneth Tyler has no resources to fall back on when he runs afoul of Sutter, no assistance or relief forthcoming from the hostile and suspicious community he was born and raised into.

The settings are well-elaborated, the world Gay paints vivid and multi-layered. Here’s Tyler in the wilderness, finding himself shadowed by wild dogs. He makes camp and cooks a rabbit he has killed:

“He ate and tossed the bones beyond the circle of firelight where they were contested with snarls and he could see their green eyes moving about like paired fireflies. When the meat was gone and he’d lain down to sleep with his rifle for bunkmate he could see a circle of their eyes drawn about the fire and in his mind he could see them stretched out, chins on paws, warily studying the fire and this strange god they’d adopted. As if they’d wearied of this wild life of freedom and hoped he could give them back what they’d lost of civilization.”

Mr. Gay tells a tall tale but at least he tells it well. The territory is remote, barren, depopulated, pocked with sinkholes, dotted with abandoned factory towns, overgrown graveyards, dissolving machinery. Ghosts of the past loom up everywhere.

Few acquit themselves well in Twilight and there’s no deliverance here, redemption in this case amounting to survival and little more. It’s a primal, ferocious novel, a thriller and then some.

It makes no apologies for itself, eschews pretension and therefore earns our respect.

Note: At no point during the course of this critique did its author once use the term “Southern Gothic”

Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu

by Laurence Bergreen
(Knopf Canada; HC: $36.95)

Marco Polo, the dauntless explorer. World traveler and raconteur. Shameless liar and self-promoter. Confidante of Kublai Khan. “Il Milione” and his bottomless store of fanciful tales. Respected merchant of Venice. Prisoner of war…

Held under house arrest by the Genoese after a calamitous naval battle, Marco, in his mid-forties but already packing the experiences of ten lifetimes under his belt, entertains his captors and fellow prisoners with stories of his adventures in the realm of the Mongols. Another prisoner, Rustichello, proposes they collaborate on a written account of his rambles and the two of them set to work. Rustichello is more partial to Arthurian romances, it’s true, but this Polo fellow tells a fine tale and, besides, it’s something to do to while away the long hours of captivity. Sometimes their imaginations get the best of them; Rustichello, in particular, is never one to let mere facts ruin a good story.

The embellishments they concoct diminish a great work, testifying against its veracity as an historical document. Sometimes, not content to be a mere observer, Marco puts himself front and center, undeservedly claiming credit, exaggerating his importance. Before we get too far into his Travels, his father and uncle (arguably greater explorers than their kinsman), disappear from its pages, reappearing only sporadically. Brazen egotism, a reluctance to share the spotlight…or an editorial decision, axing them to streamline the plot?

Mr. Bergreen’s conversant and agreeable biography of the Venetian explorer makes for a good introduction to the man and the era he lived in. I had no idea there were so many different versions of Travels extant, miscopied and incomplete, fragmentary or expurgated, some renditions twice as long as the others. There is no definitive text. Which is closest to the original? Historians finding it difficult resisting the temptation to fill in the gaps with speculation, extrapolations. These might amount to learned guesses…or, on the flip side, unproveable notions (Marco may have become addicted to opium during a lengthy sojourn in Afghanistan). Without hard evidence they contribute little to the historical record, suppositions based on the slenderest evidence, a tidbit of malign gossip, deserving of a footnote, nothing more.

Mr. Bergreen does an admirable job of setting the scene for us—his descriptions of 13^th century Venice are convincing. He recreates the Polos’ arduous expeditions with clarity and we get a keen appreciation for the ordeals they endured throughout their three year trek to the court of Kublai Khan.

Mr. Bergreen’s biography makes it clear that young Marco experiences quite an extraordinary transformation in the course of his journey through the Near East and Asia. When he first sets out he is full of loathing for the disparate cultures he encounters, their perverse sexual practices and savage, pagan beliefs. But gradually his haughty Catholic sensibilities are won over by the courage and toughness of the Mongol people. Whereas he has been led to believe they are a savage and uncivilized race, he recognizes a different reality and has a complete change of heart. He becomes their biggest fan.

When they finally reach the great Khan’s capital, the Polos make a good impression on their host—to the extent that he enlists them as part of his massive civil service.

The Great Lord’s court is a melting pot of cultures and he is not averse to using intelligent and trustworthy agents of all nationalities to fulfill his schemes and designs. Marco’s admiration for the Khan is profound: here is a canny ruler who displays ruthlessness and guile, a shrewd intelligence and, as a result, has achieved the highest seat in the world. Surely he must be the greatest of all men, wise and just in his way.

But Marco’s admiration for the aging Khan is severely tested by the evidence he sees of the ferocity of the Khan’s reprisals. Troops loyal to the sovereign lay waste to great swathes of land, killing or uprooting many people. Any uprisings or displays of disloyalty are severely punished…as Marco discovers when his duties take him through present-day Burma and Vietnam. The Mongols wage total war; frequently none are spared.

After seventeen years of devoted service to the Khan, the Polos approach their master and patron, expressing a desire to return to their homeland. He is not immediately receptive. There have been embarrassing military setbacks in Japan and, most recently, Java. The Mongols’ air of invincibility has been shattered. The Khan has lost face and feels that the foreigners in his court enhance his prestige.

But a pretext presents itself and the Khan reluctantly allows them to accompany a princess to the lands of an important ally. From there, they will have royal fiat to go where they wish within his empire.

They make it back to Venice but find that during their extended absence, relatives have presumed them dead and divvied up their possessions. They manage to settle their affairs and, thanks to the riches they’ve brought with them from the East, are able to establish themselves among the city’s gentry.

But Marco finds the sedentary life of a merchant rather boring after sharing a ger (tent) with the fierce and noble Mongols, the boldest and finest people on earth. He’s middle-aged when he’s captured after the Battle of Curzola and incarcerated at the Palazzo di San Giorgio with Rustichella.

After his release he returns to Venice, where he does well for himself. Despite his affluence and excellent circumstances, Marco earns a reputation for being difficult, litigious. He marries and sires three daughters but one gets the impression that for Marco, like Ulysses in the Tennyson poem, his friends and family “know him not”. His time in the East changed him irrevocably, set him apart from his fellow men. He is a stranger to them; he has seen things with his own eyes they cannot conceive of.

At the end he is bedridden, wasting away, a sad fate for such a vigorous and ambitious man. He dies during his 70^th year, at home, likely the last place his restless soul wished to be.

His Travels grew in fame and stature, his name acquiring the trappings of legend. Columbus read and re-read his copy of the world’s most famous travelogue. Coleridge recognized the mythic power of the stories…

After all, that’s what drew so many people to his Genoese prison: to hear wild and thrilling and bawdy yarns of exotic, far-off lands; the flora and fauna, the untamed wilderness, but, mostly, to learn of the people who lived there, their bizarre, heathen practices:

“One Mongol custom in particular astounded Marco: the marriage of dead children...‘When there are two men, the one who has a dead male child inquires for another man who may have had a female child suited to him, and she also may be dead before she is married; these two parents make a marriage of the two dead together. They give the dead girl to the dead boy for wife, and they have documents made about it in corroboration of the dowry and marriage’…”

The two families behaved “as if the bride and groom walked among them, erasing the boundary between life and death. Afterward, ‘the parents and kinsmen of the dead count themselves as kindred and keep up their relation…as if their dead children were alive'."

Whether secondhand or first person, real or imagined, factual or fabricated, the Travels amounted to grand entertainment to people whose perspectives were narrow and blunted. After all, foreign excursions were perilous in those times, involving no small amount of danger. Conditions on sea and land were harsh, danger ever present, travelers constantly set upon by marauders. Most never ventured far from the safety of their home villages and cities. They made for an eager but skeptical audience, their imaginations fired by accounts of worlds they would never see, while their practical mindsets insisted none of it could be real.

In the eyes of God, every human being has the same intrinsic and potential value - a child of God and an inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven.

That is a hard thing to admit, but it is true.  I have too many questions.  I've been described as "needing to have all my ducks in a row" before I act.  I want to calculate all possibilities and be prepared for anything.  I want no surprises that had not been anticipated and thought through.

That is why it is so easy for me to follow God!  Yes, there are times that I have my doubts and can't see clearly, but I know that nothing catches God by surprise.  I have confidence and faith in His ability to see yesterday, today, and tomorrow with the same degree of clarity.  I have complete trust that if I listen to and obey Him completely, that He has my best interest in mind and each circumstance that I face while in obedience to Him is designed to "prosper not harm" me -- even when I don't see how at the moment.

As I think about this week's study topic, "God Says I Am An Example", I have to wonder how I'm doing at instilling that same faith and confidence in others as they watch me.  Do people see me following God so closely that they wouldn't hesitate to follow me?  Does my leading show the same love, care, and concern for the welfare of others that God's leading of me shows?

Monday's text was taken from 1 Samuel 14 where we find the nation of Israel in dire straights.  Israel's army consisted of 600 men with two swords between them facing the Philistine army who had been oppressing the Israelites for quite some time.  It is at this time that Jonathan, who has one of the two swords, decides something needs to be done.  The cat and mouse game of being teased and destroyed needed to end.

So, Jonathan makes a decision to go over to the enemy outpost and asks his armor-bearer to go with him -- an armor-bearer without a sword!  Jonathan's reasoning is quite simple and full of faith.  "Perhaps the Lord will act in our behalf.  Nothing can hinder the Lord from saving, whether by many or by few."  This is where it gets hard for me.  It's one thing for Jonathon to trust God and follow His leading.  It is another thing entirely for the armor-bearer to trust Jonathon and follow his leading.  I would be thinking, "Did you say 'Perhaps!'?"  But that is just what he does.  I think his response says a lot more than first meets the eye.  He says, "Do all that you have in mind.  I am with you heart and soul."  The outcome is incredible.  The two of them kill twenty of the enemy and it begins a panic that overcomes the entire Philistine army -- "a panic sent by God".  Victory is won because Jonathon follows God and says to his armor-bearer, "Follow me".

"I am with you heart and soul" speaks deeply into how Jonathon could say, "Follow me," and get a positive response from his armor-bearer.  The armor-bearer knew that Jonathon's heart and soul was pursuing God.  God says that you and I are an example to others.  Our life calls out to people, "follow me".  What kind of response we get often depends on what kind of life we are living.  I must constantly examine myself and see if I am living a life that "heart and soul" belongs to God.  If I am following Him "heart and soul", then logic would say that someone following me "heart and soul" would actually be following God "heart and soul" because that is what they are seeing in me.

I am an example!  Am I a good example or bad?  That depends on what I am pursuing with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength.  If that sounds familiar, it should.  God says all of that -- all of me -- belongs to Him. 

I pray that as you and I live life, our example is pure because it flows from our heart and soul belonging completely to God.

It's now the end of the time,
the judgement-age.

Know man, know man, know man.
It's the eve of desrtuction man.
It's the eve of desrtuction man.
It's the eve of desrtuction man.

It's the end. It's the end. It's the end.

Yeah all the fish are dying in the ocean all around.
The sun is burning like a fire all over the world.
It's the time when Jesus comes.
That's the time when Jesus comes down now.

But you don't know what it really means man,
you don't know how it's going on,
you don't know.
Oh you don't know how it's going on,
you don't know.

You are waiting for a hero,
but there is no hero man.
The hero is the spirit of truth inside you man.
But if you don't have the spirit of truth,
you can not be released, you can not come into
- to be one with God, man.

It's impossible, it's impossible to be one with God without truth.

It's the eve of destruction now.
It's the eve of destruction now.
It's the eve of destruction now all over the world,
all over the world, all over the world, man.

It's all over now Baby-Blue.
It's all over now Sunny-Boy.
It's all over now, it's all over now.

It's the end of an age,
It's the turn of a page.
It's the eve of destruction all over the world.

It's the end my friend, it's the end hey man.
It's the eve of destruction all over the world,
all over the world man, all over the world.

Earth-quake all around.
Hey man earth-quakes all aroud.
Earth-quake all around.
It's the end.

It's the eve of destruction man.
It's the eve of destruction man,
but you can not pay for a liberty-way,
you don't know how to pay to come out of this pain.

You are sitting in the train of destruction man,
you are sitting in the train to hell.
It's all over now, it's all over now.
It's all over now, it's all over now.

It's the eve of destruction man.
It's the eve of destruction man.
And you don't have enough money to pay
the ticket out of this world.
You don't have the right money to pay
the ticket for the out-of-way, out of your pain.

With your guilty money you can not get
on the ferry-boat to heaven a place.
The price the ferry-man demanded long before to pay
was your whole life to get on board a place.

It's all over now, it's all over now.
It's all over now to get on board a place.
Occupied, all over now, occupied all over now.
Rien ne va plus, totale finale, nichts geht mehr, fini.

It's all over now, it's all over now.
It's all over now......

!!!. - WITHOUT TRUTH YOU ARE THE LOSER - FOREVER - .!!!
!!!. - THE HOLY DIVINE JUSTICE-MACHINE IS ROLLING. -
THE ONE WHO HATES THE TRUTH IS CURSED
AND WILL BE ELIMINATED - .!!!
©  Gustav Staedtler./.2000.Spain./. veritasindeum
!!!.---- VERITAS --- VENI --- VIDI --- VICI -----.!!!

You find more literature from veritasindeum by Google search.:
Gustav Staedtler / or / veritasindeum.

Zur weiteren unkommerziellen Verbreitung freigegeben.

There comes a time in everyone’s life that you should stop letting fear be the determining force behind your decision making or your actions.  Learning to have a voice and make your self known is difficult without eliminating fear.  Praying for boldness uncovered the underlying root of my problem.  I was afraid of what would happen if I spoke the way I felt, or opened the book of my life for others to read at will.  Unfortunately I was more concerned about the acceptance of man than my responsibility as a child of God. I have been faced with a situation more and more lately.  You see there are several people I have come in contact with that have some issues that need to be addressed.  Knowing I needed to say something, I held back out of fear of their reaction and possible loose of a friendship.  Of course the bright shining light bulb went off and I realized that if I was to be a true friend, who honestly wanted to see them free, then why wouldn’t I say something.  Fear that’s why!  Was it fear of what might happen, fear that it won’t be received, or fear that I wasn’t the one to say anything maybe someone with more authority or knowledge should handle the situation?  Then the second light bulb went off and I realized, I can do all things, and there is just as much authority in me as the next guy.  If God puts something on your heart then pray about it and ask what He would have you do.  If He tells you to address the situation then do it with the assurance He wouldn’t have sent you if He didn’t think you were qualified.  Sometime the fear is actually our own inability to recognize who we are in Christ.  Our own broken image holds us back form fulfilling the call God has on our lives.  Here are some scriptures that say it all:

 Mark 5:23   Don’t be afraid; just believe.

Psalm 118:6  The Lord is with me; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?

Romans 8:15  For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship.

Boldness is what I was seeking and healing of my self image is what I got.  Now as I become more whole I desire those around me to be whole again as well.  All this mixed with tons of mercy and grace and we have it going on.  So now I have a voice…

A favorite hymn that is sung by children and adults alike is I Am a Child of God.

Also I'm more likely to introduce myself in Christian settings as Pastor.  Outside of Christian contexts, I will usually say I'm a nurse. I've been thinking a bit about this lately and I've decided to just say I work two jobs Pastor/Nurse. I've already know what God thinks of me so why should I worry about what others think!

But it got me thinking about the whole thing of self identity. My response to people is often about how best I will look in other peoples eyes. When really all that really matters is how God views me.

I don't think institutionalised church helps with identity.   The carrot is often a position in ministry where the congregation gives you the thumbs up, building your ego. Unfortunately ministers/pastors use this carrot in terms of their own agenda. I give you this position if you do this for 'the vison' of the church'. It is a subtle thing that I'm not sure ministers/pastors know they are doing. I've seen it and I've seen people burn.
One thing I want to do more is rely more on God for my identity. Just tell the truth, not worry what others think. But for others in the church I want to make sure that when they do things in the church its got nothing to do with their self esteem. That when they put up their hand to do something they already know that their status in the church is nothing to do with position.   Jesus has already given them a great position right next to his side!  Every person should have respect, dignity and be loved in the church because they are a child of God's.  It is nothing about what they do in the church.

Beatrice T. shares her thoughts on this topic:

I am so grateful to know that my Heavenly Father is truly the father of my spirit and that I lived with Him and was loved before I ever left my heavenly home to come to earth. I'm grateful for this opportunity He has given me to come to earth to learn to be obedient to His commandments and to love and serve others.

(Click on the link to hear more of Beatrice T.'s thoughts and feelings.
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May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.

May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith. 

May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you.

May you be content knowing you are a child of God.

Let this presence settle into your bones and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love.  It is there for each and every one of us.