Feeling OK about me - part 2

Imagine that you are a cup.  As a cup, you want to be filled.  It doesn’t feel good when you’re empty. 

But when you’re filled up, you feel good, you feel okay, you feel strong, you feel…at peace.

Most of us fill our cups with three things:

People

Places

Things

This seems to make sense, right?  But all these things do the same: disappoint. 

This isn’t to say we shouldn’t have these as an integral part of our lives, but we can’t use them to fill our cups. 

So, what do we do?  David wrote, “My soul finds rest in God alone.  He is my rock and my salvation.” 

John wrote, “This is love: not that we have loved God, but that He loved us first.”

Solomon wrote, “Trust in the Lord with all of your heart.”

David also wrote that with God his “soul is satisfied as with the richest of foods.”

Nehemiah said, “The joy of the Lord is your strength”

Once I began filling my cup with God something wonderful happened.  When I added sweet friends (people), and good times (places), and a new guitar (things), that made my “cup overflow.” 

What do I mean?  To fill my cup with God means that when I wonder, “Am I okay?” I let God remind me: I am loved, forgiven, enjoyed, and belong.  I have a purpose in life, a meaning, and I will not be forsaken or dumped by Him.  There are many ways to help with this from just being quiet and listening, to speaking to yourself (like the psalms say, “Why so downcast O my soul? Put your hope in God.), to listening to music that reminds you of this, to reading or reciting Bible verses that remind you of your Father’s love for you, etc. 

Let yourself feel, feel, feel God's delight in you, yes you.  Fight the voices that tell you otherwise. 

In the next post, I’ll show how that helped me weather through all the disappointments that people, places, and things send our way.