Jesus is a Safe Place

The Lie: You're not enough, or You don't have all that you need.

The Truth: God has not given you a spirit of fear, but of power, and love and a sound mind.

God is always the best option, AND a SAFE one! He is not holding out on you, and he most definitely does not have something up his sleeve, waiting to trip you up.

If you walk around thinking that deep down, no matter how hard you try, you will always need "fixing" you may discover you are dealing with these two bullies:

Comfort & Safety

Comfort & Safety want you to believe that your ideas are too risky.

Your desires are "a little off" - "Too much"

That's an interesting image isn't it? All of a sudden two seemingly nice sweet grandmas are actually two punks out for your lunch money. Now, nice sweet grandmas of course are just that, but Comfort & Safety are actually intimidation in disguise. Their MO? To

persuade you. They want to get you off course, distract you and ultimately hope you will choose the option they present to you.

And when you listen to them long enough, sooner or later it's not just your thoughts, or ideas, it's your opinions, your values, your beliefs, and soon...the lie is that YOU are a little off, and it's your entire being that is "Broken and in need of fixing."

The message of Jesus isn't one that tells us how messed up we are, but how BEAUTIFUL in His eyes! He calls us fearfully & wonderfully made!

The reason I started out talking about Comfort & Safety as lies, is that they are two of the biggest lies that come to distract us from our truest needs and our hearts desires. They come in and whisper things like "You really don't need to take care of that, why do you need to, you have everything you need here, and things are just fine the way they are. Chill. You're probably making too big of a deal about that anyway." or "Yeah, that isn't going to happen that way, why don't you settle for something else instead, maybe something a little less, there isn't anyway you can accomplish all of that." basically, "Yeah, good luck with that."

Comfort & Safety sound a lot like Fear...

This space, we will call it The Space in Between, is where we can find our deepest longings, beliefs, questions, and come to know ourselves intimately, if we will give ourselves two things, Pause & Permission.

Think of the last time that you met a need for yourself, whether that was brushing your teeth, or going to prepare a meal, or make an order for one, what were you thinking about during that time? Go ahead, take a moment to reflect. If you did this, you just gave yourself Pause & Permission. What did you remember about your thoughts? Maybe you were thinking about a deadline at work or school, or reminding yourself not to forget to pick up the laundry, or the kids. You may be finishing up big preparations for a birthday party, or planning a vacation for yourself. You may have deeper things on your mind, like heartbreak, or you may be trying to reconcile a decision you know you have to make, or why that relationship was always so difficult. These thoughts and feelings that rise to the surface at these opportune times are our deepest needs.

They are our souls rising up for attention.

We can then choose to stop and listen in The Space In Between, or continue

to toss them onto the pile deemed "Be Back Later" My hope for you is that you can eventually replace that sign to something like this: "Top Priority"

Here's a challenge: The next time you hear the temptation to "play it safe" with your wants and needs, pause & give yourself permission to explore and decide "Is this wisdom, or intimidation and control in disguise?" by asking the question, "What's behind that?"

Don't forget the most important part - be kind to yourself! You're already doing that by attending to your needs, but don't just stop there. A little self compassion goes a long way in making the decisions that are best for you and it's here where we meet with our heavenly Father who wants to tend to us and be our true comfort.

"And don't allow yourselves to be weary or disheartened in planting good seeds, for the season of reaping the wonderful harvest you've planted is coming!" Galations 6:9