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The Woman Who Wants It All (pt.1)
How Can You Inspire Greatness When You Don’t Feel Great?
Sometimes I wonder if I want too much. I want to be a great mother, a great wife, a great career woman, a great woman of God, a great community leader, a great inspirer, a great home, a great body, a great wardrobe, a great pay check, etc. I could go on and on.
These wants can become overwhelming at times when I feel like I don’t have everything I want. Do I deserve to have everything? Am I worth having it all? How can I get everything my heart desires? Why should I have it all?
After praying and listening to God for days and months, I came to the conclusion that God wants everything I want for me. What I want impacts others around me. Everything I do and say is to somehow impact others by inspiring love and greatness.
But how can you inspire greatness when you don’t feel great?
In my eyes at this very moment, I do not feel like a great person. I feel greatness in my near future, but I am not there. For a while, this feeling has been eating at my happiness. I felt a little bitterness and negativity pushing its way up to the surface of my thoughts to the point where they made it. I could no longer ignore the thoughts of doubt and fear towards greatness.
I knew these thoughts were put in my head by the enemy (Satan) as an attempt to cast a shadow on the brightness that shines out of me. He won a few days, but funny thing is, I’m glad he did. See, those thoughts of doubt and fear have been in me for a long time, but I never wanted to accept them or face them. I never wanted to acknowledge their presence in my mind because I thought that would mean I was doubtful and fearful. I don’t want to be defined as such. Remember, I’ve always wanted to inspire.
I realized my doubt and fear came from not being perfect. I was fooling myself by actually believing that perfection is greatness, but there is no perfect human. There are great humans. This clicked as I was listening to "On A Day Like Today" by the Foreign Exchange and the verse "perfection only lives in your mind" came on. At the time it just so happens I was in deep thought about what Joyce Meyer wrote in Battlefield of the Mind Devotional, "God has the perfect plan for us. The plan isn't perfect because we're perfect (we're not)- it's perfect because God is perfect."
There is no great human that has never felt less than great. Every great human faces the enemy, but it’s the way they fight that makes them great.
If you think of Muhammad Ali; he faced the enemy plenty of times and lost a small number of fights, but he is still remembered as the greatest. Former president Bill Clinton recently said at Ali's memorial service that Ali inspired others even when he wasn't feeling well.
So, I think of myself and see myself on this mission towards greatness and even though I am facing the enemy as I type, I still want to inspire. You may be on this mission towards greatness, as well, and will one day face the enemy, but know that you have authority over the enemy. God gave us authority over everything on earth, including our thoughts. Reach out to God and he will give you the armor to win the battle over the enemy.
So, instead of waiting for this feeling of greatness, I will just keep being great. I will get through this battle and the many more coming my way wearing the armor of God.
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.
–Ephesians 6:10-18
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