Rick Warren writes in A Purpose Driven Life,
“Let your life reflect the faith you have in God. Fear nothing and pray about everything. Be strong, trust God’s word, and trust the process.”
Trust sounds both powerful and simple but making it a reality in our daily lives as women can be difficult. As women, we often receive trust from others by presenting ourselves as strong, confident, and brave. However, this can cause us to compete with the world and against one another because our trust in each other fails. We fall for the façade and give each other false hope. As Pastor Brent said in his message this week, “Unhealthy competition will lead towards comparison which leads to a devaluing of self. The competitive heart measures everything and compares it. This then causes envy, frustration, and eventually despair.” Our faith in the promises of God becomes weak because we get caught up in each other’s successes and that becomes a measure of our “failures”.
“What is causing the quarrels among you? Don’t they come from the evil desires at war within you? You want what you don’t have so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can’t get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from the. Yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it.” James 4:1–2.
Sometimes we just need to be able to tell someone that we are killing the game! That what we are doing gives us value or that someone expressed their gratitude for the impact that we made. And sometimes we are feeling broken and weary inside but we are afraid to trust anyone with the truth. We mess up and we let people down. We each need a space where we can be honest about our successes and failures and know that we support each other through it all.
“He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak,” Isaiah 40:29.
Let’s do this right as women, and create a culture of celebrating success (also known as accomplished failures) and praying through adversity. He is our strength in it all.
“Lord, be gracious to us; we long for you. Be our strength every morning, our salvation in time of distress.”
Isaiah 33:2.
