Fears and Insecurities

Fear. It’s something that I’ve been dealing with a lot lately. I think that I’ve always been scared of one thing or another. Snakes are definitely my biggest physical fear, but even then I’m so intrigued by them that I can’t help but watch shows on Animal Planet about them. Crazy I know. But spiritually my fear has always been of failure. Recently though my fears have evolved from that into a fear of success.

Last night at church our pastor gave an awesome word that was so timely, considering it was leap day. As a church we were making all of these declarations about what we would be “leaping” into this year, they were all so incredible and I’m still bouncing around over 12 hours later. But one of them really stood out more to me then the rest:

I will join myself with other believers who are leaping forward.

Since moving to Boone I’ve definitely done better about this, but I think it used to be because of fear of being left behind. Thankfully I’ve grown so much since then. I’ve learned that success isn’t always contagious, but the desire for success is. Being around someone who is living out their dreams and passions has one of two effects on other people. It will either motivate them to pursue their dreams too, or it cause them to claim life is not fair since they don’t have the boldness to venture out and pursue their own dreams. As important as those relationships are we have to be really careful not to give them too much control in our lives. If you are too worried about what other people will think of your dreams, they are in complete control of them and essentially you. I know that I’ve definitely been guilty of doing this. I’ve mentioned before about how I’ve known for a while now that my passion is to work with kids, but because I let other peoples opinions weigh on me so much I wasn’t really hearing from the Lord on what to do. And that’s how I worked up this plan to open my own child development center. “It’s a good way to use that degree to make some money”, is what they said. Which is true and not entirely horrible. But the Lord didn’t call me to use my gifts to just make money. He called me to follow His purpose. Those people that were speaking into my life meant well and I know they have my best interest at heart, but because of their lifestyle and lack of a serious relationship with the Lord they no longer have the position of power to speak those things over me. That being said we, as believers, need to be careful about who were receiving from.

“Remember your leaders who taught you the word of God. Think of all the good that has come from their lives, and follow the example of their faith”

Hebrews 13:7 NLT