Quieting The Naysayer
Written by Brian Jennings, Posted in Lead Yourself
You’re nothing. You’ll never amount to anything. You don’t have what it takes. You’re guilty. You can’t escape your past. You don’t deserve good relationships. You’re not smart enough. You don’t own enough. You don’t look good enough.
The negative voices in your life can deafen you. When the jagged words of your naysayers spew from their mouths, it’s nearly impossible for you to hear anything else.
I’m not talking about the corrective words of a concerned friend. I’m speaking of the damning words spoken by The Accuser, The Naysayer, The Evil One. Listen long enough and you’ll begin to believe their lies. Listen even longer and the lies become prophecies.
From subtle messages communicated through a commercial (“you’re not a winner unless you own this…”) to blatant verbal assaults, the volume of negativity and doom rises, drowning out what is true. But I have good news for you. Very Good News!
What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:
“For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8).
Our hope comes from God’s love. His resounding love, perfectly demonstrated on the cross, makes the voices of those trying to drag us down sound like a distant squeak.
Imagine standing on one side of the Grand Canyon. As you look through your binoculars, you spot The Enemy on the opposite ridge. You can see his lips flapping, but all you can occasionally hear from him, over the sound of a gentle breeze, is a distant, faint squeak. It’s the kind of sound you’d hear if someone, hundreds of yards away, slowly released air from a balloon. The sulfurous words of The Enemy are still spoken, but they fall harmlessly into the canyon. Instead of poison, you hear God’s gentle, unrelenting truth – He loves you; you’re precious; you are His.
