Casting Crowns in concert
Sunday, June 27, 2004 at 7:02 am
I am one of those guys who can receive several complements and still feel incompetent. I graduate in less than 6 months and I'm not ready for the real world. The chain reaction off of this is making me doubt God - even doubt His existence. I'm reading the Case for a Creator right now and it's a great book. It gives plenty of proof that there has to be an intelligent designer to the universe. Why do I doubt that? Only this - 'cause I don't feel like believing so. I think that's pretty much it. If it were so, then I would have to admit that I have special gifts and that God has a special purpose for my life. Now how can I do that and still have an inferiority complex? See the problem?
Last night I went with the staff @ LaMoine Christian Camp to a Casting Crowns concert. It was an awesome night. I'm spending the summer out there as a sort of internship to gain class credit for my experience and as much as everyone loves everything I do out there - I don't feel good enough. The only reason I can come up with is that I'm not the best. I feel worthless when I can't do better than a full staff at a full production studio when I myself have no budget nor experience. At the casting crowns concert, the lead singer Mark gave his story. He gave the story of how he went to college in florida thinking he was going to sing and doing very badly at the beginning. He spent 6 years at that 4-year school. He didn't expect to ever be singing for a career. Yet God kept those dreams in his heart and he never totally gave up. He felt so incapable. I can't remember much of the story now - shouldn't have waited till today to write. In the end, well, he's the lead singer for Casting Crowns, and though he only knew 4 chords when he started school there, he played and sang a beautiful song for us after his story.
He was telling the first half of my own story. I feel like a nobody. In reality, the only nobodyness I have is from giving up. After his story, my spirits lifted totally. I felt awesome, I was praising God loudly along with the rest of the music. I felt alive again. It was my own fault - I didn't want to face the God of "you can do it" when I didn't want to feel capable. It put too much of a risk of failure on me to have confidence. I feel better. I can admit the reality of God as well.
This morning, Satan confirmed the reality of God's healing last night. I went online and somehow ended up at the real estate web site that I had done a year ago. Months ago, their web site disappeared. When I made the site in the first place, I spent a lot of time designing the technical end. I didn't give enough attention to aesthetics. I charged as if I did. I felt shameful of not doing well enough. However, I gave them a guarantee that if there was anything they didn't like about the site, I would change it as long as they told me about it withing a few months. They never said anything - they never even said anything when they paid me. Today when I visited the site, it was up again - someone else's design. It had several pages on the site they never asked me for, though I offered to put in. It had a slightly better artistic design, but I could do better (though I didn't). The feeling crept in was that there was no way i could have done what the other person had done with the site. All month I've been closely updating a camp web site that I think is far better in both design and structure, but still the temptation to feel worthless crept in. I recognized what was going on, though. I wasn't about to feel bad. I was ready to thank God for showing it to me. I can't just ignore my past - I want to learn from it now. I watched a good film tonight. It was called "thirteen" and since it had won at the Sundance Film Festival - I thought I would try to learn from it. Excellent movie about understanding junior high times in the city. Very emotional...heavy overtones of the search for love. It was a beautiful movie. It's 2 now. I need some sleep. I need to post here more often.
Wow, Chad...I was looking through my favorites list in my browser and I remembered that you had this site and a journal within it...so I got to this post and I realized that we've been dealing with some of the same things. Thank you for posting what you did and thank you for helping me even though you probably didn't know that you did. I miss you and all the GC people :( And, by the way, I won't be back to GC in the fall...I'm moving to Missouri. How's that for sad, random stuff? :(
Rachel (Fishy)
Jul. 20, 2004 at 9:43 pm