dar334

It’s New Years Eve, December 31, 2017. So many are out on this frigid cold night or in their warm homes watching television while I’m sitting at my kitchen table, the only sound is the humming of the refrigerator, and Jim is nestled all snug in our bed. Many are celebrating the end of another year and anxiously looking forward to what 2018 will bring. Not me.

I’m once again feeling the need to lose myself in something, anything, Bible based. While tidying up my Quiet Room this morning I ran across the book Fervent by Priscilla Shirer that I started and never finished. I started it so long ago that I felt the need to start it all over again. She has a lot to teach us about the power of prayer. How. When. What. I will admit, she gives me a lot to think about, and to ponder …. and now that I’ve typed that I think they are one in the same, thinking and pondering that is.

Ms. Shirer suggests that our prayer life should revolve around us not being puppets of the devil. She brought to light the fact that Satan looks for our weaknesses and attacks us there. Therefore we need to put on our armor every morning in order to fight his attacks. It would be worth it if you would take a few minutes and read chapter 6, verses 10-20, of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. Heck, read the whole letter while you’re there.

Anyways, Ms. Shirer polled a bunch of women about the ways the enemy attacks them. She boiled it down to the top 10, which is where number 5 caused the little mouse on the wheel in my brain to run for it’s life. Strategy 5 is titled “Against Your Confidence”. I don’t know what I was doing when God handed out confidence, but I definitely was at the end of the line and received only a few scraps, which is probably why I take everything as a personal attack instead of just sarcasm or a joke, neither of which I can take but am able to hand out, which is something else I need to work on.

She then elaborates on your confidence by saying “He constantly reminds you of your past mistakes and bad choices, hoping to convince you that you’re under God’s judgment rather than under the blood.” (I feel the need to elaborate about the blood. When mankind was living under the Old Testament laws, they had to make animal sacrifices to atone for their sins. In other words, the perfect young animal had to shed it’s blood because we screwed up. Under the New Testament, God sacrificed his only son to atone for our sins. His blood cleaned us, i.e. being washed in His blood making us whiter than snow).

It’s true, for me. The confidence thing. I’m constantly reliving a past mistake or bad choice. Something I said in anger or in defense that should never have come out of my mouth. Thinking about those I will never be able to apologize to, or those I’ve hurt without even knowing it. Those that I’ll never have enough courage to apologize to, or those I think don’t deserve it. Those that I may verbally attack in the future before saying it in my mind first. Then I think about past relationships that ended and I have no idea why. What did I do? What did I say? And I think about the things I should have said, or should have done, or would do differently now. In just a few minutes it will be a new year. I’m not ready for what it may bring. I’m tired of playing the hand I was dealt, I want to call a miss deal. But I can’t. I have to keep putting one foot in front of the other and trust that God will carry me when I can’t do it on my own anymore.

Tonight I will start my prayer asking for forgiveness, and then asking for help in not repeating those things I just asked forgiveness for. Then I will thank God for loving me enough to forgive me.

Still pondering,

-dar