Overwhelmed and stressed with emotions, I took out my self-sabotage grenade and pulled the pin. It wasn’t pretty. Bits of self-worth and self-confidence flew everywhere as the explosion left me with snotty tissues and panda eyes. I sat paralysed, wondering what to do, so I decided to pull over my car and call my best friend. 

After a few minutes of sobs and sniffles, my husband asked me what was wrong. I told him that I couldn’t do “this!”  He calmly asked the “what” I couldn’t do. “This, I can’t do this!” (Like that explanation made total sense.) Eventually, he figured out that my insecurity about not being smart enough had reared its ugly head yet again.   

 God had answered my prayer I’d been praying, a prayer that had the words, “Make a way where there is no way” in it, (dangerous, I know) and God had answered it, but not in a way I had expected. 

In the struggle of uncertainty about where He wanted to take me, I had unconsciously took out my self-sabotage grenade and pulled the pin on my future. Instead of trusting Him, I’d picked at my scars from my past until they oozed out self-doubt and limiting thoughts all over my thinking.  

I was reminded of Mark 4:40. “How can you be so afraid? After all you’ve seen, where is your faith?”     

Hmmmm, God was obviously seeing something in me that I couldn’t see in myself. 

I’d been ratted out by God again. My, “I- can- talk -up -a- good- game- but -really -I’m- just -as- scared- as- everyone-else” act was over. 

I needed time to think. Time to get real with myself and with God. I needed to stop speaking words of death over my situation and start speaking life. My husband told a friend about my self-sabotage ‘moment’ and his advise was, “It’s Bible college, Wendy, why wouldn’t God be in that?” 

Indeed. 

My ‘moment’ –  and that’s what we’ll call it, because I’m not going to live in that place. My ‘moment’ came because God changed the tune. I was dancing to the two-step and thought I had it all figured out, but then God changed it to a different beat and I found myself unsteady and unsure.   

Note to self* God is God and you’re not.  

When God gives you a promise it will happen because Isaiah 55:11 says, ’So it is when I declare something. My word will go out and not return to Me empty, but it will do what I wanted; it will accomplish what I determined.’

But, God doesn’t really give you a time frame on when that promise will become fulfilled. He needs to equip and empower you first so that the promise doesn’t engulf you. He needs to make sure you’re worshipping Him and not your promise, gifts and talents.   

He reminded me of all the other prayers of mine He’d answered over the years. All those prayers that He’d answered in ways that turned out far, far better than my controlling, “Let me just join the dots for you God” interfering and meddling.     

I don’t know about you but I want God to show me every single step and how to do it until I trust Him completely. But that’s not how it works. 

Faith is in the not knowing. 

Trust is letting go.

Belief is knowing that God has got your back.   

He’s the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. He’s seen your future before you have and He reminds you and me  that we can do whatever “this” He’s called us to do. We can do the “this” and stop taking out our self-sabotage grenade and pulling the pin on our future.     

Like me, you believe that the blast from the grenade protects you from disappointment and from getting hurt. But in reality it just limits your movements because you’re so wounded from the shrapnel, which keeps you in the confines of your comfort zone, (and we all love that big, comfy comfort zone, don’t we?) A self-sabotage grenade prevents you from reaching your goals and it doesn’t let you live up to your full potential. 

As we step into the future God has for us we need to be aware of that self-sabotage grenade that can so easily go off in our hand if we’re not careful. 

After a lot of prayer and trusting, I’ve come around to God’s way of thinking. I think it was the moment (yes, another ‘moment’ but a better ‘moment’ this time) I heard a song on the speaker system at work. Three times I heard this song. It was Elvis singing, “It’s now or never.”

Well played God, well played.

Wendy xo