The Drive to Strive…

What if you have a genuine and captivating beauty that is marred only by your striving?

— Stasi Eldredge (Captivating: Unveiling the Mystery of a Woman's Soul)

Have you ever walked into a room and met someone that you immediately “sensed” was trying too hard, they’re insecurity apparent? Something in you knew that they were not at rest with God or with who God created them to be. They’re striving gave it all away. There’s a radar that’s been set within us, a radar that says “something isn’t right!” King Solomon said it best when he exclaimed that eternity had been set in the hearts of men. Even those who don’t know they yet long for eternity, know when something isn’t quite right. The word rest is in the bible appears 496 times, and the word peace appears 247! I don’t think God is so much commanding an attitude from us as He is giving us valuable and necessary promptings to what is best for us. "Aware of our deep failings, we pour contempt on our own hearts for wanting more. Oh, we long for intimacy and for adventure; we long to be the Beauty of some great story. But the desires set deep in our hearts seem like a luxury, granted only to those women who get their acts together. The message to the rest of us – whether from a driven culture or a driven church – is try harder." — Stasi Eldredge (Captivating: Unveiling the Mystery of a Woman's Soul) Sounds familiar doesn’t it? Try harder, do better, sin less, be more submissive, have a gentle and quiet spirit, fit in, fit the mold…..we hear these in our heads and in our pulpits, but never do we hear a message preached about becoming who God called us to be, or learning to love ourselves in the midst of imperfection. We rarely hear about rest or peace, at least not in a tangible and real way. Striving is a leftover habit we have from the Law and the Law only brings death to God’s creation. Striving mars God’s original design because we’re most likely to strive to fit a certain mold, a picture we have in our heads of what we’d like to be like, rather than embracing how we were originally made. I’m “loud”. Those who know me are not shocked by this statement. I’m loud and I usually speak my mind. Early on in my walk with God I was ashamed of my “assertive” nature. The women I saw were meek, shy, quiet, and I was often encouraged to emulate that. “Have a gentle and quiet spirit” to me sounded like “shut up and talk less,” and that just wasn’t me. Then I read about Deborah, Abigail, and even Joan of Arc and realized that these women had personality traits I possessed as well, and that maybe being assertive was how God had intended to make me. That isn’t to say that I didn’t still need to use wisdom and discipline to temper those traits a bit, as we all need to, but maybe, just maybe God hadn’t made a mistake with me. I was meant to be who I was, and the shame and striving were immediately lifted off of me, and as I learned to love myself, I learned to love others. Striving impairs our ability to love. Romans 13 talks about “loving others as you love yourself,” implying that you cannot avoid doing one and accomplish the other. It’s impossible to be at war with how God made you, and still love others just the way God made them. Striving, like anything else, casts a shadow on our life lenses and causes us to view everyone through them. That means that when we’re not satisfied with ourselves, we’ll have a hard time being satisfied with others. When God encourages us to rest in Him, He isn’t giving us some abstract concept. He’s asking us to quite our striving, put down our burdens, worries, and insecurities, and find peace in who he created us to be. That’s when we’ll find that we’re beautiful just the way He made us. After all, God’s pretty good about not making mistakes…