Demoralization

Earlier this year, I completed the Beth Moore Bible study "Believing God." I was too cheap to buy the accompanying video at the time. I thought the study was great without it. But when my friends decided to buy access to the 9-week series online, I chipped in a few bucks and started backtracking through the videos.

She's quite hilarious. Her content is as serious as it gets, but her presentation is just something else. She, with her big hair and her thick Arkansan accent and almost constant outburts of "Glory!" or "Halleluah!" draws me back to past years spent in the thick Tennessean and Arkansan humidity. But she knows her stuff, and she's excellent at making the Word of God come alive and at presenting new dimensions I definitely would have missed.

In the video I watched the other day, she pulled out a concept that hit me right between the eyes. It may not have hit you, had you seen it, but this is my struggle and it's what spoke to me that day.

Demoralization-when Satan figures out who we fear most that we are. And he sets out to confirm it.

What do you fear you are most?

For me, it is incompetence. I hate it. I fear it. I fear I am not good enough. I fear I can't compare to so-and-so. I fear I might fail.

And he uses it, that angel-turned-liar. He convinces me I will try and not succeed, of course I'm not good enough, pretty enough, smart enough, tough enough, etc. And I usually crumble, paralyzed in my fear of imagined reality.

But in the video the other day, Beth was saying how she was afraid she'd fail God. She'd try and fail. And then it hit her: that all-encompasing strength that renews broken spirits and heals past wounds and gives gifts to the ungifted.

God will not fail you.

That's right. Of course. What was I thinking?

And I peel myself up once again, trusting in One who is and will always be enough.