No Longer Trying to Protect Myself

In a few times in my life, I found myself in the worst jobs of my career.

I was so angry, frustrated, and afraid all at the same time.

Yet I could not figure out why.

When I look at everything that I had to go through, and I kept wondering:

Why did I go through all that abuse? What was it that had kept me holding everything back for so long?

I then realized, and I experienced this revelation fully: I had believed that everything depended on me, and I was afraid of what I would lose if I stood up to an abusive person, or even an abusive boss.

The God whom I believed in, based on what was taught to me, and what I had been reading in non-Biblical books like Alcoholics Anonymous, was a God whom I had to serve, to whom I owed something, anything, everything.

I had to be the good boy, I had to obey the rules, I had to be nice and get along with everybody.

If we know that we are taken care of in every way, then we stop thinking that we have to protect ourselves. When we recognize that we have something better, we get rid of the old things which we had held onto, including those former, abuse relationships which were never good for us in the first place, but which we tolerated because we thought that we would never find something better.

Or that we were worth better.

Today, I know that I am worth more, because Someone Else gave Himself for me.

It is not based on what I do, but all that He has done. He takes care of me, because He promised that He would.

In fact, He already did by all that was done at the Cross.

The bitterness for the longest time was that in the midst of the abuse and suffering, I had believed that all of it fell upon me to do everything, and then it was my fault because I had not done enough.

Today, I understand that there is no condemnation in Christ, and that even when I did not step up in the past, the pressure is not on me to push back or make it right.

He has taken care of everything, and the only reason I was so angry was that I was trying to take care of everything myself, yet at the same time convinced that I had to play by a set of rules and maintain my own composure at the same time.

I felt dependent on the favors of men for so long. Today, I know that I have and keep receiving the full favors of God Almighty, through Christ Jesus.

The bitterness in the past was all about the failed notion that I had to protect myself, that I had to produce this life on my own.

Now I realize that not only is the grace of God a better idea, but that it is the only idea. Either we believe that He has taken care of everything, or we do not. Either we rest in His goodness, or we don't. It's just that simple.