Nay vs Yay

Placing your worries in the hands of God is honestly one of the best things you can do for yourself. Allowing Him to take hold and guide you through the battles you face will make all the difference.

Feeling discouraged? Pray for enthusiasm!
 
Feeling scared? Pray for boldness!
 
Feeling unmotivated? Pray for passion!

This week those are the things I've been needing to pray for.

1) Discouraged vs Enthusiastic

There have been times in the last week where I've just felt down and discouraged. This has largely been brought on by the workload leading up to my block tests. Thoughts jumped at me like, "There's just too much work to do, I can't get this all done." I got the feeling that I wasn't able to give my best to everything and that discouraged me.

This is where I needed to play the enthusiasm card! Enthusiasm was the topic we talked about at church last week. Looking at the original Greek, and the development of the meaning of this word, my youth pastor summed it up as meaning "Full of God." When I was feeling down and discouraged about my studies, I asked God to "fill me up" with Him. It was when I opened my heart to His Word and His love, that I then remembered that God will indeed equip me to be able to complete the tasks ahead of me. I could then move forward with an excitement and readiness and rather than being discouraged, I could attack my work with ENTHUSIASM!

'I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.' Philippians 4:13

2) Scared vs Bold

With this topic, I'm speaking on two different levels. The first is the nervous, jittery, oh-my-goodness-I-have-to-be-assessed kind of scared. The second is, "I am freaking out about my future and what lays ahead of me in life" version of scared. The nervousness for my test was border line stress I think. Taking a few minutes to step into God's Presence and ask for peace let that stress ease and it turned into nervous-excitement. I just had to remind myself that hey! I actually love performing, I love acting, I love storytelling and this test wasn't a "You're wrong." or "You're right." sort of situation, it was just another opportunity to learn and grow as an actress. With that in mind, my attitude changed and I went into my block tests with a sense of bravery.

The second type of scared-ness was not quite the same. In fact it's something I'm still struggling with right now. Because of this, I recently read a book called What Are You Afraid Of? by Dr. David Jeremiah. It tackles the issue of fear with a Biblical approach. There was one statement that if I were to sum up the book, really stood out to me. That was this, "There are two ways you can face the future - with fear, or with faith." Way too often lately, I've been choosing the fear option. This is something that I recognize I need to work on. I believe that as I seek God on this matter He'll help me out. So I've begun to pray for boldness as I walk into the unknown.

A Scripture that spoke to me this week surrounding the idea of facing the future with faith is Psalm 18:31,32 which says, 'For who is God, except the Lord? And who is a rock, except our God? It is God who arms me with strength, and makes my way perfect.' And one other favourite of mine on this topic which I hold close is Psalm 16:5, 'You, Lord, are all I have, and you give me all I need; my future is in your hands.'

3) Unmotivated vs Passionate

The final thing I want to write about for this post is feeling unmotivated versus being passionate. I came to Excel because I was like YES! I love drama! YES! I love dance! YES! I love Jesus! But then over this second semester I've felt a lack of excitement and passion mainly around my major - drama. This is kind of similar to the discouraged part of this post. I'll have work to do for drama class but feel totally unmotivated to get on and do it. On the most part, I still do it because there's a strong sense of responsibility and work ethic that I carry which means I get it done anyway, but I haven't felt stoked or alive while doing so.

I was chatting with one of my fellow drama majors about this during the week and we'd kind of hit the same spot where we had lost a bit of the passion we know we have for drama, acting, and storytelling. Through talking it out, we both came to the conclusion that it's when we make time for God, and when we're in a close space with Him that our passion is fired up. We left the conversation saying, "Perhaps we should pray for that passion to return..." And so the next day as I sat on the train, I began praying into this hardout.

I could list off SO many examples of God answering my prayers, and this is just one more example of His faithfulness! That day, I got stuck into my classes with a total joy for the work I was doing and the things I was learning and accomplishing - HELLO PASSION!

Performing arts is all about creativity. I'm discovering more and more, that it is when we are in closeness with THE Creator, God, that our creative juices can flow and produce beauty beyond what we could ever imagine on our own.

Conclusion Thoughts

So to end this post, I'd just like to encourage you to pray into the areas of your life where you feel you're lacking. It might be some of the ones I've mentioned here, or other things, but no matter what you're struggling with, I believe God has the answer.