Counselor's Corner: Focus on Your Progress Not Your Failures

To focus means to be intentional at looking or directing your attention at something specific, making whatever you’re looking at larger than other things around you.

Recently, I found myself focusing on all what was wrong with me, what I was not doing enough of, whom I might not be pleasing, or what I should be doing. I was magnifying all the negative aspects of myself while minimizing what is good about me and what I am doing right.

If you magnify your weaknesses, failures, and mistakes-you will eventually be discouraged and eventually depressed.

Most of the time the originator of focusing on what is wrong with you comes from satan and his cohorts, but we can also play a part as well. What are you believing about yourself? What God says, what other people say, or what the enemy says? Perhaps you are believing a combination of what God says, other people say and what the enemy says about you.

When you focus on what you are doing wrong as opposed to what you are doing right, you get stuck, afraid to move forward for fear of making more mistakes, having another go-around of failures, or letting yet another person down.

You can get bogged down in past failures, and believe the lie that you don’t have what it takes to accomplish anything for the Kingdom of God.

Rest assured, if you are growing in God, desiring to serve Him, or making spiritual progress; the enemy will use old, familiar tactics to slow you down. This strategy is in hopes that you will be so defeated and discouraged by the continual focus on your weaknesses and mistakes that you will not pursue the calling that God has placed on your life.

Challenge:

Focus on what you are doing right. Focus on your strengths. Focus on all the progress that you have made. Remember to focus is to be intentional. Reject thoughts of failure, past sins that you have been forgiven of, and weaknesses that you are in the process of overcoming.

Ask the Holy Spirit to infuse in you the truth of how He sees you and what He thinks of you. Ask Him to show you what your strengths are.

None of us are perfect, we are being made into the image of Christ but we have not and will not obtain perfection this side of eternity.

Forgive yourself of all your past sins, failures, mistakes, and those you may have let down. Ask God to forgive your sins, and let go of the unrealistic expectation that you have of yourself.

Be the best you that you can be.

Counselor'r Corner: Living in the Present

How many of us, if we are honest, live stressed-out and anxious/worried about tomorrow? If you answered yes to that question, you are not alone. When we live our lives projecting tomorrow’s outcomes we forfeit the grace God supplies to us daily, not in lump sums. How many of us try and store God’s grace for us? We believe with enough planning and control we can predict outcomes as well as secure our future. But we could not be more wrong. How many of us have tried to get a close handle on our lives by predicting the outcomes of our lives. We try and analyze and figure-out every possible outcome and situation until we become exhausted and frustrated. Life happens and we cannot live on tomorrow’s provisions for today.

Reflect and ponder: Do you live in the present or do you live in the past and in the future? What causes you not to live in the present moment?

Living in the past or projecting the future will cause stress, anxiety, worry, fear, fatigue and possible illness. Some of us try and live in the past because we have not “settled” our past or properly let-go and healed our hurts as well as past failures.

Some of us try and figure out future outcomes because we live in fear and at the root of that fear is a lack of trust in God.

We might say we trust God but deep down where no one else can see, we felt we have been let down by God, forgotten by Him, or discouraged in the waiting process. So we take matters into our own hands because we feel God has not come through for us. We don’t want to admit this because we might look bad or maybe others may not think we are really Christians, or for that matter even love God. At times the control and trust waxes and wanes but underneath it all, I have struggled to make sense of some very difficult matters in my own life. I hope I am not alone in this. I have prayed for certain things, people, and desires for years and sometimes they have become worse, and other times it is a slow trickle to the desired outcome I want, and then there are those prayers and cries that seem to go unnoticed. I said seem to go unnoticed, because do our prayers really go unnoticed or is it not the time or maybe something that would not be in our best interest? I have so many questions, I am sure like you that I don’t know the answers to. Such as the inability to have children, desiring to be married, sickness of a child/family member, health issues, or even the pain a parent feels for their prodigal child.

I projected my future because I lived in fear. Fear of the unknown, fear things will not get better, fear that it will always be this way. Fear causes you to think and behave irrationally. Life seemed uncertain and unpredictable to me so I had to take over and mange my life.

Taking life as it comes and living in the present day is a great way to allow your fears to take a backseat. Living in the past will also cause you great stress, so being and living in the day you have is very healing. Why be anxious for the things you truly do not know will or won’t happen, or why live in regret and past failures? This is not easy to do if you have tried to control your life or try and project possible outcomes of your future. This will not be easy, but let’s start with surrendering. Surrendering all forms of control, figuring-out, analyzing, and living in past regrets. This also entails trusting God with your life and the lives of others you love. This step requires faith and letting-go.

If you live one day at a time, God will supply you the grace you need for that day, to handle the problems and situations that happen that day. However, you can’t take today’s grace and store it for tomorrow. God supplies what you need for that day, not on yesterday or tomorrow. Think about how stress-free you will feel when you live in the present.

MEDITATE ON THESE SCRIPTURES:

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Matthew 6:34, NIV

Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.

Matthew 6:34, Message