Breaking the Bondage of Maintaining an Image

I realized that after mentioning, recently, my vision and hearing problems, and then talking about my back I just threw out, that I sound like I'm falling apart! You might be picturing me, hunched over, hobbling, squinting, and calling out,"Huh? What did you say deary?"! I can almost picture some of your sympathetic murmurings, "That poor dear, she's really a mess"!

Well, I am a bit of a mess. On some days I realize this, and on other days I am packaged up quite nicely, thank you. But it all depends on the moment, the month, the miracle of grace, as to how I am doing. I know that full well.

It's appropriate that this week is my next LIFE Workshop I'm teaching. This was planned out months ago, but what a coincidence: I am teaching a workshop called "Breaking the Bondage of Maintaining an Image."

Last night, I lay in bed, flat on my back with a heating pad under my lower back, watching a beautiful but somewhat depressing PBS movie called, Miss Austen Regrets. They depicted Jane as a woman who sipped a lot of wine, spoke her mind freely, and looked like she regretted almost everything while having her speaking that she did not. A bit confusing for me.

The subject of Regrets is a fascinating one. No one wants to have a lot of regret at the end of their life. I would not want to get to the end of my life and have regret over failing to follow God into every thing He called me to. I am purposing to have no regret, each day, in how I live, and in how I seek God. It's wholehearted living I'm after- and as James would add, "with no doubting" because as we know when you doubt you're like a wave of the sea tossed about, and I feel nauseous just thinking about that image.

One of the best ways to go wholeheartedly after God's will for your life is to give up wanting people's approval of you. But this is no small thing. We struggle with this constantly. For this matter, I look at the Biblical figure of David as my mentor. God allowed David's descendant to rule on the throne "because David did what was right in the eyes of the LORD , and had not turned aside from anything that He commanded him all the days of his life , except in the matter of Uriah the Hittite" . (1 Kings 15:5).

Yes, David messed up in that "matter" of adultery, and I'm sure he messed up repeatedly in attitude and sins of the heart. Look through the Psalms and you see him calling out for God to search his heart because he knows only God can keep our heart on target. But David continually longed for God's approval of him, God's blessing and God's favor. It was God that David looked up to when the world looked down at him.

What I look like in God's eyes is the key thing, isn't it? People will not always have the complete picture in mind. They couldn't possibly know all that God has called you to, or allowed you to go through for certain reasons. People will never fully understand the way that you take. But whose eyes are always on you? In whose eyes does it matter what we look like?

I don't have enough energy to go around fine tuning my image and wondering what I look like to others. I have been given, though, enough strength to seek after Him, enough hope of hearing His "Well Done, good and faithful servant" so that the roar of the crowd or the jeers of an enemy do not sound like anything other than noise in my ear- because my eyes are on Him. And most importantly, His eyes are on me.