As a Christian, it can be easy to hear about this great big loving God who created the universe and died for my sins and think that when it comes to doing His work I have to be perfect. In order to be associated with Him, I have to have a certain look, a certain sound, a certain affectation that everything around me and about me is good, because God is good. It’s not a conscious thought for me, but it is one that has guided my actions and inaction for most of my life.
As a child I was raised under the maxim “Children should be seen and not heard” and the unspoken rule of “Don’t do anything to embarrass anyone, ever”. As I’m finally taking the steps to create content and share my inner world, I began to wonder at the idea that I have to be ‘put together’ to record my content. Yes, we should always put our best foot forward, but as I sat typing up a video idea in my planner, I recognized the thought beneath my wondering “Do I have to put my wig back on?” as fueled by my old nemesis, perfectionism.
As my brain engaged the well-worn thought patterns of self-sabotage, shame, and procrastination, I had to ask myself “Why do I cringe away from authenticity?” If I hadn’t had the last three years with God that I had, I would’ve just said that I don’t. In fact, when God started to talk to me about my fear of man, I outright told Him he had the wrong girl. I had run an online business offering content creation services and training to other small business owners, and I was very comfortable in front of the camera. I could do livestreams, shoot short videos, and I was very transparent about my struggle with getting to the point and mispronouncing words. I had built a bit of a brand around the concept of showing up authentically in your business and content, so I was absolutely showing up authentically, thank you very much. Or so I thought.
In those early days, God asked me a few questions in the way that He does the asking. “If you’re so authentic how come you don’t talk about Me?” I could’ve answered probably any other question, but that one took me out for a while. As I sat with it, I realized I had this belief in my heart, a self-image that existed outside of His glory. I didn’t want to be known as a “Christian business owner” I didn’t want to only serve other Christians with my services. I didn’t want to be locked in to only being able to talk about Biblical things and I surely didn’t want to preach or teach the Word or anything Christian-y, and I felt that if I made it known that I was following God in my business, then I had to go all the way with it. I wasn’t interested in being lukewarm and so I knew that if I took a step in that direction then I would have to go all the way.
But the clients coming to me were mostly all Christians. When we would have sessions, Holy Spirit would give me downloads about them and their businesses that there was no possible way I could know. Downloads that worked, that cleared away years of confusion and that set them up to go on to do greater things. And I loved it, but I didn’t want to be known for it.
It’s amazing how secret things hide in our hearts until God shines His light and reveals them. I didn’t know that I was offended with the call of God on my life, had no idea that was even a thing, until He gently confronted me with the sledgehammer that is His questioning. Because I was offended by the idea that God had called me and was requiring my business, I was only showing up as half of myself. I wasn’t allowing myself to be vulnerable or show my process. I was driven to show up like I had everything together. And honestly, looking back I looked so janky lol. I looked like I was trying to hide how much I didn’t have it together, how desperately I needed people to believe that I was further ahead than I really was. I was constantly consumed with feeling like a fraud and battled unrelenting doublemindedness, anxiety, and poverty, frankly. I made little to no money in business year after year, and it is only the goodness of God that has sustained me while I flopped around in the miry clay of grasping pride.
Something about the phrase grasping pride just hits my gut. I first encountered it in a Bible study session in my car one morning on the beach reading Jeremiah 28:1-4
28 In that same year, at the beginning of the reign of King Zedekiah of Judah, in the fifth month of the fourth year, the prophet Hananiah son of Azzur from Gibeon said to me in the temple of the Lord in the presence of the priests and all the people, 2 “This is what the Lord of Armies, the God of Israel, says: ‘I have broken the yoke of the king of Babylon. 3 Within two years I will restore to this place all the articles of the Lord’s temple that King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon took from here and transported to Babylon. 4 And I will restore to this place Jeconiah[a] son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, and all the exiles from Judah who went to Babylon’—this is the Lord’s declaration—‘for I will break the yoke of the king of Babylon.’”
Now, for context, in Jeremiah 27 Jeremiah is delivering a word from the Lord to King Zedekiah wearing a wooden yoke around his neck, to symbolize the coming Babylonian captivity of Israel. Specifically verses 14-16 say: “14 Do not listen to the words of the prophets who are telling you, ‘Don’t serve the king of Babylon,’ for they are prophesying a lie to you. 15 ‘I have not sent them’—this is the Lord’s declaration—‘and they are prophesying falsely in my name; therefore, I will banish you, and you will perish—you and the prophets who are prophesying to you. 16 Then I spoke to the priests and all these people, saying, “This is what the Lord says: ‘Do not listen to the words of your prophets. They are prophesying to you, claiming, “Look, very soon now the articles of the Lord’s temple will be brought back from Babylon.” They are prophesying a lie to you.”
Earlier verses 9 and 10 say the same thing.
My notes for Jer 28:1-4 read “Hananiah spoke directly contrary to God, even after a clear warning that anything separate from God’s word on the matter would be false. This is grasping pride. Did he want to be famous? Did he want to usurp Jeremiah?”
Even after multiple statements by the Lord Himself that any word contrary to His on the matter of Babylon would be a lie, Hananiah had the gall to open His mouth and declare the opposite of what the Lord said. And as I type this, I can see the parallels, with God asking me “Did you want to be famous, Tremaine? Did you want to usurp Me as God and Ruler and the One in charge?” I’d never made that connection before, but I can humbly say that yes, I foolishly did want to be the one in charge. I wanted, in my heart of hearts, to succeed on my own in business, and so I foolishly opened my mouth and declared something different over my life and my business than what God had said from His own mouth. Don’t get me wrong, I fully wanted to give God the glory. I wanted to be able to point to Him when people asked me how I did it, and tell them how God delivered me from anxiety and depression and how I found what I loved and was able to put what was in my hand to use, just like He told Moses to do way back when.
The problem with that was I wasn’t being like Moses and operating in obedience. I was grasping tightly to an ideal and a vision for my life that flew directly in the face of God, and I was mad that He wouldn’t bless it. Frankly, it was rooted in unbelief. Partially because I simply cannot wrap my mind around what God has shown me He wants to do in my life. The other part is because I could not see how He would take me from where I was to what He showed me through what He was telling me to do.
This sounds like Hananiah, who probably could not see how God could fulfill His promises to His people through a time of captivity to idol-worshipping Babylon.
Tremaine, what does this have to do with embracing the cringe. I’ll tell you.
In my desire to be this self-made 6- and 7-figure business owner like I saw all over social media, I was being flagrantly disobedient to the Lord because He had told me, explicitly, multiple times, to write and create content documenting my journey. I wrote it down every time and while I fully intended to be obedient, the ‘NO!’ in my heart rose loud and clear when year after year I failed to do so. I have no excuses. I don’t even fully understand what my resistance was, except that to obey would take me in a direction I could not see being fruitful for my life, and, in my place of grasping pride, I trusted my low, limited, finite perspective more than I trusted the Author and Finisher of the story I’m living. It’s not like He made me, or anything. Not like He knows my end from my beginning, or like He set good works for me to complete, or like He desires to direct my steps or anything.
God had given me a clear directive to submit myself to His will through writing and creating content, and by refusing to do it I was steeping myself deeper and deeper in rebellion. But I was so against embracing the cringe that was and is my messy, unaesthetic life that I not only became the proud that God had to humble, but I robbed God of the glory that would have been given to Him when the people He wanted to reach through my content saw my “good works” – of obedience, vulnerability, and dying to self – and glorified my Father in heaven.
I’m so thankful for His mercy, because can you imagine the stench of my worship rising up to Him when I said one thing but did another because there was a root in my heart I trusted more than Him? I am so thankful that He didn’t strike me down like Hananiah.
Now God is merciful, and there is no condemnation, but how much more glorious would my life have been at this stage had I heard the words of my Father, obeyed His instruction, and embraced the cringe?
What about you? Are you grappling with an instruction from the Father that doesn’t line up with want you want and who you want to become? How will you embrace the cringe for His glory? Let’s chat about it in the comments. Until next time,
For His glory, Tre.
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