During the first week that I was in Australia, I had to meet the youth minister of the church, who was going to be my overseer for the year. As soon I walked into her office, I sat down and she goes “I have a prophecy for you.” My initial reaction was, “heck ya! I can’t wait to hear what she says!” In the past, many prophecies that I have seen or have been a part of have always been encouraging. It’s always exciting to watch them happen because they are tremendously inspiring, and extremely life-giving. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this term, basically when people prophecy over you, they are giving you a word from the Lord. Whether that is direction for your life, or wisdom for a specific circumstance (past or present) it’s always a word from God, and it is typically very powerful. With that said, Katie (the youth pastor), looks at me and says, “The Lord wants me to tell you that this is going to be a season of offense for you, that you are going to be really offended while you are here, and that he is going to work through this boundary in your life, so you that can handle criticism in the future.” Wait a second, did she just say offense!?! How is being offended anything BUT encouraging! I mean really, who enjoys being offended? Ugh! Frick, this would happen to me. The first prophecy I get is one telling me that I am about to be offended….grrreeeaattt.
While that prophecy wasn’t exactly what I wanted to hear, by the end of the day, I had already begun to appreciate it because it’s true, I suck at handling criticism or failure. Even though it wasn’t ideal, I knew that becoming stronger in this area was going to lead me in becoming a stronger/healthier person. One of the reasons for why I came to Hillsong was to pursue emotional wholeness, so that by the time I got home, there would be no areas or footholds for the enemy to attack me in. Looks like handling criticism and offense was number one on God’s “to-do” list in Laura Browder.
Fast forward a couple of weeks and bam, my first lesson on criticism had already begun. During this past week I had a slip up that had caused me to break one of the rules at school. It was an accident and something that I could have easily kept hidden, but a prayer of mine (that I had prayed at the start of this journey) was that God would start to refine in me the areas of my integrity. In the past, it’s been easy for me to get away with things due to my ability to do so. But something that has been on my heart, is that just because I CAN, doesn’t mean that I should. “Everything is permissible but not everything is beneficial”—1 Cor.10:23 That night I felt convicted on what had happened and ended up turning myself in the next morning to the person in authority over me. I literally cried as I confessed the details and was ready to take on any and all consequences that needed to happen. My instructor was gentle yet firm, and proceeded to tell me what needed to happen next and then that was that. While it sucked to have to admit something like that, ultimately I knew that this was the start of God developing my character which will make me a better leader and person in the future. During the day I began to pray about criticism and the lessons that needed to be learned about it; that night, God revealed a few ugly things about my heart.
How I deal with failure: I often want to control things and make things better. In this situation I needed to confess my heart to the Lord, recognize that it had been addressed and talked about, and move on. Earning credibility and trust is something that is out of my control and will happen in time; I need to be patient and remind myself that my worth and approval doesn’t come from the people around me or what they think/say about me, but the Lord. Clearly there’s an area of my flesh that needs to be redeemed by the Lord (confessed/repented) I’m here to seek restoration and want to find light in all areas of my life and not just the areas that everyone sees.
He then went on to show me that I have a tendency to control my image or perception of how I see myself in other people. Basically, I like to control the way people see me. Often I get away with things that have happened in my past, or choose not to remember things/alter them to fit an image of who I want to project onto other people. Being able to identify this control issue allowed me to understand why criticism was such a stumbling block for me. Obviously, if someone is mad at me, they’re not seeing the image of who I’m trying to project onto them. This dilemma is the reason for why I have a tendency to want to correct hurt feelings really quickly because I want to fix the situation; I want to fix the way they’re seeing me so they can in return, see me in the way that I want them to see me as (laboring, I know). That’s a lot to maintain and if it’s not maintained, I find myself crippled by the lack of approval that I’m not receiving by that specific person or persons. How draining! That takes a lot of effort and there is no freedom in that. Instead of figuring out who I want myself to be and how to go about making other people see that, I need to walk in the fullness of who the Lord wants me to be and seek to find approval from His will and not others. C.S. Lewis had a brilliant quote in his infamous novel “Mere Christianity”: “The relief, the comfort, of taking the fancy dress off—getting rid of the false self, with all its ‘Look at me’ and ‘Aren’t I a good boy?’ and all its POSING and POSTURING . To get even near it, even for a moment, is like a drink of cold water to a man in a desert.”
Challenge for all of us: to do some self-reflecting and see if there are control issues in our lives specifically with how we present ourselves to people (looking for their approval of who we are)
Prayer: that we would be able to confess these revelations to the Lord and seek to find understanding in who HE created us to be, and that we would walk fully in that.
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