You Are More Than You Know: Face Your Fears, Grow Stronger by Patsy Clairmont

Author:Patsy Clairmont [Clairmont, Patsy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw
Publisher: Worthy Publishing
Published: 2015-03-16T23:00:00+00:00

Deliberate on . . .

“But let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.’ For whatever is more than these is from the evil one” (Matthew 5:37).

Discuss . . .

When was the last time you said a firm “no”?

Is your tendency to be a “yes” girl or a “no” girl?

Is there someone with whom you need to establish new boundaries? How will you do that?

7

Hole in

Your Bucket

God uses cracked pots.

—Patsy Clairmont

For a while there was a teaching story that circulated on the Internet about water pots and how one pot had a hole in the bottom and day after day, as it was carried to a village, it dribbled water out on the dusty trail. This wasn’t helpful to the bearer of the pot since every drop was life-giving moisture that was seeping away, but later it was discovered that new life was sprouting forth on the now-moist path because of the unintentional daily watering the splatters offered.

We, like the marred pot, because we are imperfect, have the potential to offer through our brokenness life-giving moisture to others in the form of hope. That’s exciting! But every story has two potential sides. While our brokenness can, under the redemptive plan of God, be used for good, it is also an ongoing loss for us if we don’t deal with our jaded responses to our pain, which can cause our sense of value to seep out. Facing our behavior is its own kind of scary; it’s not easy to say “yes” to scrutiny.

We’ve all encountered people who require ongoing praise. No matter how often or loudly we applaud them, they need more. They soon exhaust us. It softens our frustration toward them when we understand that their heart has a hole in it and the affirmation we and others offer tends to trickle out. Unfortunately, the lost encouragement isn’t growing flowers; it’s just evaporating as if it never existed, which sends them running back to us for more. In time, we find ourselves darting down grocery aisles at the store in an attempt to avoid them. We grow tired of refilling them, knowing like a flawed pot with a leak, our praise is never enough.

Honestly, we all appreciate encouragement, but when we are chasing after people-praise and it’s never enough, something else is going on. If we keep bringing up a subject to gain approval and, even after being affirmed, we run around trying to hear more praise from others, we are either narcissistic or we have bought into the lie that we aren’t acceptable and grasping is our way of trying to feel better about ourselves. Human ingenuity invents ways to survive, but compliment gathering is not the solution. Compliments aren’t sturdy enough to hold up to a lie, and a lie is usually the cause of such self-seeking. Kudos are like armloads of flowers—lovely, but soon wilted.

What has helped me when I start fishing for compliments is to spot my needy behavior, and to do two things. First, I need to stop asking others to give me what only God can provide.

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