Decisions in the Trenches

This is post #1 of 3: 

March 2013 brings new things, and new ways. I hope and pray to get to the root of a long time issue. 

I hope to glean some things as I journey together with God. I have high hopes I will learn something, something of value. 

It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out. Proverbs 25:2

I am searching oh King. 

I find my source of direction is from the Bible, God. I am now sure this is the only way to go. I hear it all the time, " follow your heart ", yet God says of our hearts :

 The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is? Jeremiah 17:9

The thing I am contemplating is this; Can I REALLY accept myself, and love myself?  I say,  "God loves me, and you". I am able to believe it for you, but wonder if I really believe it for me. If we are to love others, the way we love ourselves, then it behooves us to love ourselves first and well. 

I know this isn't 'selfishly', or in a 'me first' way. It is more like: Alpha Horse Confidence.  KNOWING you are valuable, because your Creator gives you value. 

This is easy for me with you: being crippled, blind, different- any sort of different, over weight, under groomed, over zealous, full of self confidence, believing/acting differently... I get THAT. Yet, when I look in the mirror, I hear: 'change this, change that'.  

Romans 7:21-25 says: "So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me.  For in my inner being I delight in God’s law;  but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.  What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?  Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!"

The trouble is this: I know what God says, and I hear my own 'voice' in my head. It could be another voice I hear, a mom, a dad, an ex, a neighbor. Anyone who spoke to my heart and added to the 'deception' already there. 

This is why I can't afford to listen to my 'heart'. I may have been told, " Don't act like that ".  When in Truth, God says, ' Be yourself, I will love you no matter what ... and by the way..., try to speak a bit more 'gentle' next time '.  My God is always Truthful, and mostly gentle, but He is also the Lion of Judah!  

Well my post is on my 'self acceptance'. so for starters I will pray this prayer, " Father, please reveal any lies I believe about- loving myself, and how it is affecting my perceived value.  I ask that you show me how to undo the chains in me, Thank you so much, in Yeshua's name, amen. "