Faithfully Thinking: It doesn’t matter what they say about you if God already spoke over you

Have you ever had someone suggest you can’t do something you want to do?

I don’t mean you are a 4-year-old child and you want to touch the light socket and you can’t.

I don’t mean you’re 21 and you want to drink until you can’t see anymore because you are upset about a breakup and someone rightly tells you that you can’t.

I mean you wanted to be an art teacher and someone told you that you weren’t good enough or smart enough.

Or maybe you wanted to be a writer or a pastor or a church leader and someone told you – “Sorry.  Not possible. You’re a mom/too young/too old/not Christian enough/not smart enough/not experienced enough. You can’t do that.”

I’ve been there.

I was told once that I should be happy and content to be a mother and only a mother. That was all I was meant to be. The idea I could be a professional photographer and a mother was ridiculous to this person. It turned out to be ridiculous to me as well since I had (have) no business sense and the business failed. That’s another matter for another day, though.

During that same conversation, I was told another friend of ours should also be content to be a mother and stop trying to find other jobs to do. Her identity was a mother. Period. That’s where God wanted her and me to be, this person said.

Oddly, though, this person was a mother and teaching art at a private school. Somehow, she could be two things in life but we were only allowed to be one. Not sure how that worked in her brain but . . it did.

I was very confused by that conversation. It never made sense to me. Maybe she thought she was encouraging us and I misunderstood the conversation.

What I do know is that we should do what we feel God has spoken over us, not what someone else says God has spoken over us.

The other person may be well-intentioned. They may very well feel God has told them something about you and they think it is the right thing to tell you.

My advice is to always check their suggestion with what you feel God has spoken over you.

Another friend recently told me she heard the words “put it down” when she thought about me. We both knew she was talking about how hard I’d been striving to grow my social media to promote my books. I felt that advice truly was an encouragement from God and took it is such. I started picking up a book more than my phone and began to feel less stress.

In his sermon this past Sunday, Pastor Steven Furtick of Elevation Church said, “What people say about you only has the power over you that you give it. If your father spoke something over you, it doesn’t matter what they say.”

This doesn’t mean that fellow Christians won’t confirm something to you that you feel God has been telling you. It also doesn’t mean that someone really did feel like God told them something about you and your life they think you should know. They may very well be right about that specific thing.

Double check it, though. Don’t just go with it because they said God told them.

Pastor Steven urged those listening to him to remember that it doesn’t matter what someone told you that you couldn’t be. It matters what God has always known you to be.

Furtick says he has to say often to himself, “Christ is in me. I am enough.”

That’s a hard one for me to say, but I’m going to try.

I don’t ever feel enough.

Even writing this blog post I have these constant thoughts running through my head:

“This is stupid.”

“This is going to offend someone.”

“I probably shouldn’t have brought up that story about the former friend. It makes her sound worse than she probably meant it even though it is something that still puzzles me.”

“I’m not good enough to write stuff like this.”

“Someone will probably read Steven Furtick’s name and tune me right out.”

We are never going to be perfect.

We are never going to get it all right all the time.

We are never going to please every person all of the time or even some of the time.

What we can do despite all of that is step into who God says we are – not who we or others say we are.

If we are taking a step that is wrong, God will correct us and turn us on the right path again.

In Jeremiah 1:5, God spoke to Jeremiah: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”

This was a message for Jeremiah but it can also be a message for us. He knew before we were born what the purpose of our life was and what we are capable of.

Who are we to question what God has spoken over us?