SHUT IT DOWN!!!!!

We all go through various situations…. Some that leave us feeling sorry for ourselves, some that we allow to make us cowards, to doubt who God is and who we are in Him etc.

As I was growing up, my parents would take my school report card and my older sister’s report card and compare. What I didn’t get, is why they’d do that as if we were in the same class. Because of my dad’s occupation at that time, we moved a lot so my parents decided to enroll us at a boarding school instead of changing schools with every move (which we had done quite a bit). I was 10yrs old and my sister 11 ½. It was then that my grades started dropping from my usual position one in class to position 5. My sister on the other hand maintained position one in her class. I was always compared to her, and made to feel like I did nothing in school, even when I had made an improvement. (I know my parents meant to encourage me to do better, but they didn’t know that they were crushing me). After that went on throughout primary school and high school, I was certain that I wasn’t good enough - I just couldn’t measure up to my sister and I hated it. Even extended family members made me feel like I didn’t amount to much coz when they came home, they only wanted to speak to her. After high school I wanted to venture into music. My parents had never heard me sing, and so they never supported the idea and I was too afraid to go for any auditions. My sister had just performed at the Nairobi Hospice, and I knew I’d be compared to her so I held back.

Allowing myself to live in the shadow of my sister for so long denied me the opportunity to discover who I am, who God made me to be because I was so blinded by what everyone around me was saying, instead of what God was saying. For a very long time I was unable to appreciate the gifts and talents I had as I would also compare myself with everyone else around me and decide that I wasn’t as good as they were. I told myself that I had a right to a pity party since I never felt as supported and celebrated as my sister was. And not only in talents and gifts, I even hated how I looked as I’d compare myself to skinnier prettier girls. At one point, I resulted in doing extreme work outs, starvation and taking slimming pills and before I knew it, I’d become seriously anemic. But that’s not what I’d like to cover today. Later in life when challenging opportunities presented themselves to me, I’d give excuses, or just turn them down as I was not confident enough to do it. I was waiting for someone to rescue me from my state, dust me up and make me happy, confident, feel loved and celebrated etc. but no one came!

All that we go through in our everyday life is part of the stages and phases of the process towards our God-ordained destiny. It’s how we respond to the process that determines how successful we’ll come out.  God is in the business of upgrading us, He’s always expanding our capacity to hold and walk in His various attributed. If He’s teaching you confidence, then He’ll allow a situation where nothing’s working for you, if he’s teaching you patience then it’ll take a while before He gives you an answer. If He’s teaching you perseverance then guess what….?

It sounds unfair ‘ey? But the reason He does this is not to hurt us, it is to bring out the fullness of His attributes in us. You and I cannot handle all that He has purposed for us unless He refines us first, so that we can withstand whatever we face.

You are fashioned from the very fabric of God, you are like Him! And God ain’t no coward, He is supremely confident in His ability! In you lies the potential to be more than you could ever imagine. In you there’s a warrior that needs to be brought out, and warriors don’t wait for people to feel sorry for them, to come and rescue them… they don’t look for sympathy, they look to be empowered. They look at every situation as a learning opportunity, and as an opportunity for growth.

I was listening to one of Graham Cooke’s sermons yesterday and he said that, sometimes we are the ones that prolong certain stages of the process. For example, if God is teaching you perseverance, and you go about sighing and saying “oh I can’t wait for this to be over!” or “I’ll be so happy when this is over”. God is like “You haven’t learnt a thing, now have you?” So what should have taken a week takes a month or more and so on. If you don’t think he’s right, ask the Israelites who took forever to reach their promised land because of their murmuring and disobedience (Exodus, Deuteronomy, Joshua).

So what should we do?

I can’t say that I have mastered what am about to share, but I’m growing in it and loving this journey.

I have learnt that it is very important to build an intimate relationship with God. That is key number one, and there’s no other way around it. You need live conscious of His presence around you always, live from the depth of your relationship with Him towards your current situation. Live from the inside out! As you do that, you are in constant alertness as to what season you’re in with God, as to what He’s teaching you at that moment, and you can have joy despite the chaos around you. It is in the depth of this relationship that you fully know your Identity in God and who He is for you at any particular moment. Quoting Graham Cooke I’ll say “Your intimacy with God is the most intimidating thing about you.” It intimidates the devil and his minions! It is what gives you the authority to speak to the various mountains you face (Matt 17:20), it’s what gives you joy and peace in the face of great chaos, it’s what gives you the grace to endure the process and come out victoriously! It is this intimacy that causes you to have a renewed mind: causes you to see yourself and others through God’s perspective, hence you begin valuing yourself and others.

How do you build intimacy with God?

Step one: get born again, 2: ask God to show you a church where you can grow spiritually, 3: get baptized in the Holy Spirit (speak to the pastors that God has placed over you to assist you with this, ask God to cause you to understand) 4: spend time in prayer, in worship, in the studying of the word of God -not as a routine but out of love, out of a hunger to grow in God, seek to please God first. 5: Enjoy every step of the growth process.

Remember that God has called you to a specific purpose and He intends you to fulfill this purpose like Him, because you are like Him in image and ability (Gen 1:26). Every day He takes us in new levels in Him, and with every new level, there’s a new test.

I’ve learnt to embrace my authenticity. I forgave myself, my parents, my extended family and anyone else who didn’t see me for me and I no longer look back and wish I could be anyone other than me. I very much celebrate my sister as she celebrates me. I love me! And daily I am learning to walk in confidence because confidence is one of the by-products of spending time with God.

There are situations we are all currently going through. Whereas they can’t be ignored, let’s make a conscious decision to find out what season we’re in and what God is currently teaching us. Let’s also make a conscious decision to shut down all complaining and murmuring, to shut down every pity party that we’ve got going on and to shut down any kind of thinking and feeling that is not of God! As Graham Cooke puts it “Make a choice about how and where you will place your internal focus”

The more we allow the voice of circumstances to dictate how we respond to life, the more they cripple us from living out our true selves, and with all the noise, we can hardly hear what God is saying.

Lets’ SHUT IT DOWN!