I’m Finally Fighting

I have been avoided writing a blog becuse I have had a hard time trying to find something to write about. Originally this was going to be a blog telling people about what I have been doing but I did not think that that was the most valuable thing I could publish. Do not get me wrong, I have truly enjoyed painting Jaco, it is just that the tasks that I have been doing have not been where I have felt the most challenged. Walking to Central Park each morning and painting a mural that is over 100 feet while listening to an audio book for hours has actually been right in the center of my comfort zone. I have not been bothered by the repetition of painting daily over the past three weeks and I have not felt that painting Jaco has been a mundane or questionable use of my time. Instead, my greater struggle has been inside of my head and within my spirit.

Going into the trip I knew that I had a struggle with validation. After a recent conversation with my outstanding and seriously amazing squad leader, Christy McFarland, I have realized that this struggle has been rooted in a desperate need to know that people want me. Many of my actions around others are rooted in a powerful push by my flesh to know that people value my gifts and abilities and that they specifically want what I, Jala Boyer, can bring to the table. I am constantly and subconciously looking for people to verbally communicate this to me to the point where I often find myself avoiding people who have similiar strengths as me because I know that if I am around them, I am less likely to recieve verbal affirmation because I’ll have to “share” it with them.

It has been an interesting struggle to combate because I already know many of the truths to defend against this lie. I know that I should not be dependent upon other people desiring my abilities because God has called me specifically to help persue his future kingdom. I know that though God does not need me to proclaim his glory, He certainly wants me. He wants me to both enjoy the satisfaction of living in his love and know that the approval and attention he gives me is far more than enough to fill me desire to feel wanted by other people. I know that the beauty of His sovereignty fully enables Him to fulfill His promise to give me an adequate amount of opportunities to use my gifts for His kingdom. Yet despite these truths, I still struggle to ignore the lies that tell me to sing louder so that other people will hear my voice and later tell me how much they enjoyed it or the lies that encourage me to be intimidated by and avoid people who also have giftings in similar areas as me.

Though it is extreamly annoying that the most convincing versions of these lies appear when I am doing the things that I love most, I can already see how the Lord is slowly transferring my “head knowledge” about the truths He continuously is speaking over me into “heart knowledge” that I will be able to effectively use to defeat the lies I face regarding validation. For example, most of the truths that I described in the above paragraph have been revealed to me within the past 24 hours. They are still sinking in and I am still learning the full weight of them.

A request for prayer would be that God would continually help me uncover the root of this lie and that He would faithully grow my knowledge and deepen my understanding of how His desire for me is more than enough to make me feel wanted and validated.