Dealing With Your Inner CriticSample

I am not naturally handy, but when I saw the price to replace my flooring, I decided to install it myself. I researched and watched YouTube videos and asked some friends. I let the hardwood acclimate in the house, spent almost 3 hours measuring for the first plank, because once you lay the first plank, the rest of the planks line up true to the wall. My house had a tricky layout where I had to lay plank from both ends of a hallway to meet in the middle. The final plank gap was a beautiful rhombus instead of a rectangle. I custom cut the final plank and one end was a full half inch narrower than the other. The whole floor was perfect except this one rhombus shaped plank in the middle of the hallway. In my defense, I still don’t know if my project was off or the house wasn’t properly square. Still, when people came over they spoke effusively about our beautiful hardwood flooring. What do you think is the first thing I did? That’s right, I walked them over to the rhombus to show them my mistake.

I pointed out my mistake to pre empt them noticing it first. I would be mortified if they saw it, never said anything and then later told their friends, ‘Steve obviously doesn’t know what he is doing.’

That is what your inner critic does. Life can be vulnerable, especially when your mistakes are on display for your friends to see. Imagine standing in God’s presence, fully seen, like John describes in this passage. It can be unsettling initially, which is why ‘our hearts condemn us.’ Our inner critic is seeing us vulnerable before God and condemning us in a misguided form of protection. If we can condemn ourselves first, maybe God won’t.

Of course, it is misguided because ‘God is greater than our hearts.’ He has no plan to condemn us, but to love us. But first, we need to learn to quieten and contain the voice of our inner critic

What message of condemnation does your inner critic send you? Over the next 5 days we will look at some tools to wrangle it. For now, you can receive John’s invitation to relax into God’s presence by quieting your inner critic with God’s truth. Tomorrow we will begin to dig in deeper.