Our minds are our hearts are fertile ground. We get to choose what we put there.
The Bible is as much as a practical guide as it is spiritual. The fact is that people have preconceived notions about the contents of the Bible and, in turn, do not read it with an open heart.
"You reap what you sow" is a brilliant analogy for everyday life. What are we planting in our minds every day is crucial. How dare we complain about our minds being in torment and negativity when we planted those thoughts there by what we listen to and watch? Some people live with a continuous replay of shame tapes running through their minds. Cut the tape.
I recently taught our church teens about the concept of "false teachers". All around us are messages of confusion and the only way to know what is falsehood is to compare it to God's Word. I tried to instill in them that they must desire a hunger for reading and studying the Bible. No one can force-feed you. No one can make you desire it for yourself.
Truthfully, it actually comes down to developing the habit of daily study so that it is muscle-memory and you build up some memorization. I call my morning routine my GPS-gratitude, prayer, scripture. I developed the HABIT first. I began small with only a few verses. Now, I read and pray for about an hour every morning, with no hesitation.
This habit developed from a desire to learn. A desire to know. A hunger for guidance.
I found Jesus as child. I craved the peace that comes from Christ and I was pleasantly naive enough to believe everything beautiful told to me about my Lord. I am thankful that I was childishly naive and followed Him with unwavering faith.
But for a long, long time, even as a Christian who studied the Word daily, I was full of anxiety. I questioned myself, hated myself and spent much of my time being emotionally exhausted, from all this over-thinking. (Over-functioning anxiety is the turmoil that causes people to over-do, overcompensate and be overly bossy and critical of themselves and others. Under-functioning is the other type of anxiety, which cripples people, keeping them from starting tasks and keeps them in a shame spiral of feeling incompetent.)
From the outside, no one knew this was going on because I was "doing" all the things and I, personally, really didn't know how bad it was because I was in the trenches of it. This was my everyday life for years and years. Sometimes you don't know that weight of something you're carrying until you feel the weight of its release...
Perfectionism is a dangerous mindset because it focuses on being a success or a failure rather than on growing. Anytime something doesn't go perfectly, it causes great anxiety for people who are perfectionists. Sometimes it even stops this group of people from ever starting anything because they know they can't get it as perfect as they want it to be.
Mistakes cause anxiety and frustration in such a way that perfectionists feel completely defeated. Often, they just give up all together.
Those who are in this straight-jacket of perfectionism deal with self-doubt and personal shaming on a replay tape in their brains, constantly.
What about spiritual perfectionism?
I am constantly hearing Christian people say self-deprecating comments. They belittle themselves and put themselves down. In their innocence, I would say they do this in fear. I know I spent much of my younger years in fear over being seen as proud, arrogant or self-promoting.
We know we should be humble and self-denying.
We know that Christ calls us to take up our cross.
We know that we are full of selfish desires that we must constantly repress.
We know how dangerous pride is.
But, more and more, I notice in others that they misunderstand the definition of humility. Adults and teenagers, alike, need to understand the true meaning of Christlike humility and what it looks like in everyday life.
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