{Be Real} Unraveled

“I feel like I’m unraveling,” I said. That’s the only way I could describe it. Like I was coming apart at the seams.

Like life was downward spiraling.

I hadn’t been diligent about spending time with God or digging into the word. I hadn’t been making healthy choices or being active. I had filled my life so full that I didn’t hadn’t had time to clean my space or do my laundry. I stayed up too late and woke up late and was always tired. I couldn’t seem to be on time. Everything was always rushed.

I had no balance, no peace. 

And I didn’t understand why. I was trying to do all the right things, I was trying to do all the things, and yet nothing felt accomplished, and nothing felt good.

The decisions I was making continued to slap God in the face. Like I was saying, “You don’t matter right now. My flesh and my desires are the only things that matter to me in this moment.” I kept choosing myself over Him. In my health. In my relationships. In my business pursuits. Way too much of me. Never enough of Him.

It was like I had made myself so big that I could no longer see past myself. I could no longer believe His heart for me because my desires were so uncontrolled.

And I would wake up feeling so distant from Him. I didn’t want to get out of bed. I felt destructive. Like anything I touched would just crumble to dust. Like I couldn’t be trusted. People would speak things to me and all I heard was: “You’re failing. You’re a joke. All your attempts are a waste of time.”

I could blame it on any number of things. Exhaustion. Lack of sleep. Depression. Low self-worth. And all of those things are very real things that I’ve dealt with and continue to experience.

But here’s a truth. When we don’t do the things we know we are supposed to do, that puts space between us and God’s heart. And it’s just enough space for the enemy to rush in and steal our attention, tell us lies, and get us off track.

When we aren’t being disciplined in even the simplest of things, we are immediately more vulnerable to the attacks of the enemy.

“Whoever has no rule over his own spirit is like a city broken down, without walls.” Proverbs 25:28 NKJV

When we are continually disobedient, we kept cracking the door for the enemy of our souls to do the work he does best: to steal— our joy and our peace, to kill— our dreams and our hope, and to destroy— our moments and our days.

We let our hearts run wild, and in doing so, we destroy our own walls of defense. A city broken down.

Hear my heart in this. I’m not saying that when we slip up, we mess everything up. But when our sin becomes a pattern, when we are continually undisciplined in our daily lives, we are setting ourselves up for failure.

“So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control.” 1 Corinthians 9:26-27

And that’s what I felt.. Like I was struggling just to keep up. Grasping at straws, just getting by. Getting a few hours of sleep and getting out the door just in time and getting projects done at the last minute.

Throwing punches into the air, never connecting, never hitting the mark.

I’m at the Pursuit Conference this week and I love something that Jessi Connelley pointed out. She shared the meaning of the Greek word for repent:

To change your mind toward the will of God.

And I just love that.

Because I think that’s all it is. I think that’s the beginning and the root of discipline. To be in a constant state of changing your mind toward the will of God. Keeping your mind on the will of God.

It starts there. With discipling our minds and our hearts to be centered on the will of God. With changing our thoughts and our intentions.

If we can keep our minds and our hearts on His will, everything else will flow from that. The fruit of the Spirit will flow into our actions, our words, and our moments, because our minds hold His will above all else and our hearts want to fulfill it. More than anything.

Because each moment we choose Him, each moment we discipline our minds to be stayed on Him, we lay bricks in the walls around the cities of our hearts. We become a city built up. A city protected. A city on a hill.