The Lord is my strength.

When I said, “My foot is slipping,” your love, O Lord, supported me.  When anxiety was great within me, your consolation brought joy to my soul.  The Lord has become my fortress, and my God the rock in whom I take refuge. -Psalms 94:18-19, 22

The Spirit helps us in our weakness.  We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words connot express. 

-Rom. 8:26

The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and I am helped.  My heart leaps for joy and I will give thanks to him in song.  -Psalm 28:7

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I spent a good deal of last night and this morning reading the Bible and talking to God about my attitude towards the way I let myself feel yesterday.  I'm typically not the type of person to let the opinions of others get to me, but lately I feel like the enemy is really trying to mess with my head about my interactions with people. We all get bummed now and again, I guess I just feel stupid for voicing my sudden rush of self-doubt.  God has blessed me with incredible, encouraging friends.  It's something I was really reminded of on Saturday.

But then Sunday rolls around and I let the tiniest, stupidest thing get to me and eat at my thoughts all day.   I let it plant a seed in my mind and I let the enemy water that seed.  I knew I was being stupid, but I let it happen anyway.  Yes, what I was feeling was a bit discouraging, but I also was over-analyzing the situation and letting the enemy guide my thoughts in response to what I over-analyzed.  Bad combo, right there.  All I got out of that was a realization of how selfish I am.  When I went to God about it, He told me the same thing.

I started off praying about my issues with doubt and jealousy, but as He and I conversed and I asked Him to give me the right perspective on this whole thing, I ended up praying about my issues with selfishness instead.  I realized that's the actual issue at hand.  And that is not the kind of person I want to be.  I want to be thoughtful, self-sacrificing, generous, understanding, patient, trusting, loving.  I think if I work harder on focusing on developing my character into those kinds of things, if I work harder on focusing on becoming the woman God intends me to be, I will stop worrying about issues like this. 

The Bible talks about how destructive jealousy is, it also talks about how it's the product of foolishness.  Why would I want to spend my time harboring destructive feelings that make me look like a fool?

The Bible also talks about not worrying about stuff that will happen.  God has that stuff under control and I recognize that it's out of my control..so why do I worry?  I need to continue to strive to work on the things that I can control so that I can be prepared for what God has in store for the future.  If I focus on that, I won't have time to worry about trivial things.  But it's a struggle, and I need prayer.