What if I can’t do this?
The thought hit mid-workout the other morning. I jerked to a halt, almost like I’d been physically assaulted.
What if I can’t do this? What if I can’t raise the necessary support for the residency? What if I can’t do this?
Denial
My first reaction: denial. I responded like that ancient couple hiding behind the bushes. They were concealing themselves from God, of course, but they almost certainly felt as though they could cover what they’d done. Dust under the rug, the kid ducking beneath the blanket. If you can’t see it, it didn’t happen. Everything’s fine; everything’s okay.
Right?
Wrong.
I knew the wrongness the moment I thought to shove the thought away. Pretending a thought didn’t happen doesn’t negate its existence. It persists and waits for an inopportune time to bring itself to mind.
Recrimination
Because of that, I almost instantaneously shifted to the second reaction: recrimination.
Erin, you’re not even three weeks into raising support. How can you ask this question already?
Ah, accusation. I recognized the thoughts for the poison-tipped arrows they were. Reliant’s support-raising training, plus the book The God Ask, readied me for them. They said doubts would come, the devil would assail me. My own mind and body would, too.
As a result, some part of me — God’s Spirit, I’d wager — resisted the thought. The fight didn’t occur in the usual way, though. I didn’t shove the question away or flail at it like some mad thing. I let the question linger, gave it room to breathe.
What if I can’t do this?
Truth
The third reaction: truth.
I can’t do this. That’s the whole point. Raising support reveals how inadequate I am and how glorious and mighty God is.
The thought brought freedom (John 8:32). Doubt and despair will always come; I’m human. However, God overcomes both. My faith, wobbly as it is, doesn’t change who he is or what he plans. God is in control, and he makes me adequate—even in the midst of asking, What if I can’t do this?
Such confidence we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God, who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit: for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
2 Corinthians 3:4–6
Image: jwstrength79 (Creative Commons)