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Real Dudes,
The other night I was laying in bed and my mind was racing. I don’t recall how this question popped into my head, but I got to thinking “How does a seed that you plant in the ground know which way to grow? I mean, it’s just tossed into the ground and then covered up, so in the dark, how can it really know which way is up/above dirt?” After doing a little research, here’s what I found. In one article, the author teaches us that “All plants can sense the direction of the gravitational field and orientate themselves accordingly. This is called geotaxis. In mature plants, phototaxis (growing towards the light source) overrides the gravitational impulse for the stalk and leaves, but the roots – and the seed while it is underground – rely on gravity for orientation.There are two theories to explain this mechanism. It could be that the protoplasm (the living substance inside a cell) exerts greater pressure on the cell walls at the bottom of the seed. Or it may be that starch grains within the cells settle at the base. One or both of these cues influence the production of plant growth hormones that cause the plant to ‘steer’ as it grows.” https://www.discoverwildlife.com/plant-facts/how-do-seeds-know-which-way-is-up Isn’t it fascinating how God created all things…including a seed. For a seed it’s natural for it to sense the pull and get oriented, and then in time move and grow towards the light source. What application can we pull from this? According to the verses below, Jesus is The Light source we all should be drawn to / gravitated towards and growing up in…maturing in…a type of spiritual geotaxis and spiritual phototaxis. As we grow in Him, we then can reflect His light onto others, so they too can grow in and towards Him. So they too can have life and have it more abundantly. In John 8:12 (NLT) we read that “Jesus spoke to the people once more and said, ‘I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won’t have to walk in darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life.’” Please take the time to check out the rest of the passages below. Men, let’s continue being drawn to The Light even in the midst of a dark world. Let’s continue maturing in The Light. And let’s continue sharing The Light with others as well. Practicing His Presence, Nate Matthew 5:14 You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. John 1:4 In Him was life, and that life was the light of men. John 3:19 And this is the verdict: The Light has come into the world, but men loved the darkness rather than the Light because their deeds were evil. John 9:5 While I am in the world, I am the light of the world." John 12:35 Then Jesus told them, "For a little while longer, the Light will be among you. Walk while you have the Light, so that darkness will not overtake you. The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going. John 12:36 While you have the Light, believe in the Light, so that you may become sons of light." After Jesus had spoken these things, He went away and was hidden from them. John 12:46 I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in Me should remain in darkness. 2 Peter 3:18 (NLT) Rather, you must grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. All glory to him, both now and forever! Amen. John 10:10 (ESV) The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.
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Real Dudes,
Here’s a link to John Piper explaining for us how to battle what is called imposter syndrome https://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/how-do-i-battle-imposter-syndrome And then below is the audio script from that short message. So you could either listen to it, read it, or both at the same time. Enjoy, Nate Audio Transcript Today’s question comes to us from an anonymous young woman. “Pastor John, I thoroughly enjoy listening to these podcasts and find them exceptionally helpful for dealing with life’s challenges. My challenge is anxiety at work. I work in medicine. For some time, from school until now early in my career, I think I’ve suffered from ‘imposter syndrome,’ a phenomenon that commonly affects professionals, often females, with tendencies to be perfectionists, leading them to think they’re a fraud at their job, not good enough, and any success is by chance. I don’t trust my own talents and skills. “Because of this, I experience significant anxiety before and during work, to the extent that I feel like I need to quit. This is really affecting my mental health, but not because I don’t enjoy my job — I do. I have prayed to overcome this, asking for help and for healing. Do you have any thoughts? Also, I recently came across a coach who specializes in ‘imposter syndrome,’ and she overcame it herself. Would it be wrong for me to seek help from a non-Christian coach?” I’m going to save that last part of the question for another time, because the more I thought about what she’s dealing with, that’s what I feel like I need to address here. We can take up the issue of the proper or improper use of secular counseling later. Here are the four traits that I see in her life that need a biblical perspective:
1. Rest in the gospel.I would call the imposter syndrome a kind of professional anorexia. In other words, what anorexia is to the body, imposter syndrome is to your competence. With anorexia, a ninety-pound, eighty-pound, 25-year-old woman (it might be a man, but it’s almost always women) stands in front of a mirror and sees an overweight woman. With the imposter syndrome, a competent, successful, responsible, helpful person stands in front of the mirror and sees an incompetent, irresponsible, unhelpful, fraudulent employee. The challenge in both cases is to overcome the illusions and live in reality with Jesus Christ at the center. So first, perfectionistic tendencies: very often at the root of the felt need to always do better and to do more is the deep uncertainty of being loved and accepted and approved — most deeply by God, but also by other significant people in our lives, like parents or friends or supervisors. Now, the biblical response to such a drive — toward doing more, doing better, being perfect — is not to discourage people from the pursuit of excellence, but to turn everything upside down. In other words, apart from Christ and his salvation and grace and friendship and forgiveness and acceptance — apart from Christ — we are constantly striving toward love, toward acceptance, toward forgiveness. The gospel turns that upside down and puts acceptance and love at the bottom, from which we can then strive for excellence without the burden of “I’ve got to prove myself in order to get myself loved.” By grace alone, through faith alone, on the basis of the work of Christ alone, we stand on the glorious rock of the forgiveness of our sins, our acceptance with God, the removal of our guilt, the canceling of our debts — all of it rooted in the love of God, who chose us for himself before the foundation of the world. That’s where life and every day starts. And then there is, of course, varying degrees of passion for achievement and excellence. But we don’t pursue it in order to get accepted, or in order to get forgiven, or in order to get love. “Apart from Christ, we are constantly striving toward love, toward acceptance, toward forgiveness.” So, I would encourage and urge our friend to step back and make sure that she has a true and real and wonderful and restful and sweet grasp of the gospel of Jesus: what he did for her on the cross, what her salvation is by grace through faith. Oh, it’s a very, very liberating thing to realize, “I can still pursue excellence, and yet not be strangled and anxious because of all the insecurity and fear that I can’t do enough to be loved. Life has been turned upside down; it’s been turned on its head. I’m free.” That’s the biblical perspective on perfectionism. 2. Realize you’re not a fraud.Second, she refers to a sense that she may be a fraud at work rather than truly competent, truly responsible and helpful. Well, here is what fraud means. Fraud is an intention to deceive a person or a group, usually for personal gain, which puts the other person at significant risk. We don’t call it fraud when somebody thinks we have more competencies than we think we do, if we have no intention to deceive them, and if there is no evidence that we lack competencies that they think we have. If you come into work every day with a good will, not a deceptive will, and at the end of the day you are perceived as competent, responsible, and helpful because there’s been no evidence to the contrary, you’re not fraud — no matter what your feelings are. 3. Recognize God’s providence.Third, she says that people with this imposter syndrome are prone to chalk up their competencies and responsibility and helpfulness to luck. Now, the most natural response to this is to call it irrational, which it is. You go to work every day, week after week, month after month, year after year, and always perform at a level of competence and responsibility so that it causes your supervisors to approve, and your mind says that those several thousand moments of competency were strokes of luck — like you never had a bad hand in three thousand games of poker. That’s irrational. But all destructive syndromes are irrational, so what good does it do to say that? She knows it’s irrational. Here’s an alternative to that response to this imposter syndrome and thinking it’s luck. I would suggest that you embrace this. Think hard and long about it, and preach it to yourself: there is no such thing as luck — period. There is no such thing as luck. What the world calls luck is God’s providence. So, what you’re dealing with is not several thousand professional instances of luck, in which you lucked out and proved competent and responsible and helpful by accident. That’s not what’s happening; there’s no such thing as an accident or luck. God, not luck, brought about those thousands of moments of competency and responsibility and helpfulness. This is a pattern of divine sustaining, divine support, divine help, divine guidance, which bears all the marks of a calling, a vocation from God. Therefore, when you wake up in the morning and you feel anxiety that your luck might run out today, one of the answers is to preach to yourself, “There’s no such thing as luck. Stop thinking that way. It doesn’t exist. God has sustained me in all these thousands of moments of competency that I’ve been calling ‘luck.’ God has sustained me even if I am truly incompetent.” “What the world calls ‘luck’ is God’s providence.” I mean, imagine it: even if I am truly incompetent, truly irresponsible, truly unhelpful, God has chosen the thousands of opportunities to cause me to act as if I were competent, and were helpful, and were responsible, and he intends for me to see in this pattern a calling, a purpose, a design, because he’s faithful. It’s not luck; it’s God. So, get up in the morning and say, “I will walk into this day not crossing my fingers that luck is going to run out, or won’t run out, but rejoicing — rejoicing in faith that my God is with me. He’s faithful. He’ll keep up his end of the calling.” 4. Root your confidence in God’s faithful care.Which leads to a brief statement about anxiety. You can see the answer to anxiety is already built into the other three. Jesus said, “Do not be anxious.” And then he gave eight reasons in Matthew 6:25–34 for why not to be anxious. And all of those reasons are rooted in this — not that you are really competent; that’s not where they’re rooted. They’re rooted in this: you are of more value than the birds, and you are of more value than the lilies, and God is sovereign, and God is faithful. In 1977, Jackson Browne sang the song Running on Empty. In his song, he was referencing a road trip when he wrote the lyrics “Running on, running on empty, Running on, running blind.” For some reason this song came to my mind this morning. It made me think about how some of us often approach our devotions…our time spent in God’s Word. We get out on our faith journey, neglect the Word or spend very little time in it, we have very little spiritual fumes to run on, and sometimes even approach our devotional time with God blindly. When tough times come, we take a peek at our spiritual gauge and it’s in the red. Uh oh, now what?
In the Old Testament book of Jeremiah, the prophet Jeremiah shares some life experiences that were not pleasant, but even in those times and leading up to those times he was able to say this to the Lord in Jeremiah 15:16 (NLT) “When I discovered your words, I devoured them. They are my joy and my heart’s delight, for I bear your name, O LORD God of Heaven’s Armies.” When faced with tough times Jeremiah wasn’t running on empty, nor was he running blindly. Much like the Psalmist in Psalm 119 (see below), Jeremiah He hid God’s Word in his heart so he would have something to get him through such times. What about you? When faced with tough times, even seemingly good times, are you running on empty or blindly? Are you desiring to devour His Word? Do His Words bring you any kind of joy regardless of the situation you’re facing? Just something for each of us to chew on. Don’t know where to start? Let me encourage you to begin in John, Colossians, or James. Each of these are great places to start, but so are other books of the Bible. If you still feel stranded along the way, then please reach out…I’d love to encourage you in your walk with the Lord in any way that I can. Practicing His Presence, Nate Psalm 119:10-13 (NLT) 10 I have tried hard to find you-- don’t let me wander from your commands. 11 I have hidden your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you. 12 I praise you, O Lord; teach me your decrees. 13 I have recited aloud all the regulations you have given us. Real Dudes,
Struggling to get a good night's rest? That’s been me for years, so I tried something this past week that has somehow made a way for me to sleep all the way up to my alarm clock for the first time in forever. I started watching comedy before I close my eyes at night. I’ll select something like Tim Hawkins, Michael Jr., News Bloopers, King of Queen bloopers, Everybody Loves Raymond bloopers…basically, anything along the lines of bloopers. I’m reminded of a couple different Bible verses. Nehemiah 8:10c (The Message) The joy of God is your strength! Proverbs 17:22a (The Message) A cheerful disposition is good for your health. Maybe you already sleep just fine, but if not, then let me encourage you to give this a try for a week or so. Enjoy, Nate |
AuthorNate Smith is a husband, a father of 6 girls, grandpa to 3 granddaughters and one grandson, a police and fire chaplain, a pastor, and has a passion to see men grow in Christ. 
#girldad including granddaughter
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