Fear & Identity

I came across a blog post that really fit with what we are talking about in What Women Fear right now. The post is about success & failure written by a pastor who is in the middle of a giving campaign. He gets asked the question, "Will you feel like a failure if you don't raise the money?". His answer is that if he doesn't raise the money he will be disappointed, but he won't feel like a failure. He talks about how he knows what it is like to feel failure since he has made some huge failures in his life. Then he goes on to say this--"What causes us to feel like a success or failure always determines where we find our identity". That really hit me. When I flip it around and think about the times I have felt like a failure I can figure out where I have placed my identity. If I'm honest only some of my feelings of failure come from feeling like I have let down God. There are quite a lot of times when I feel like a failure that don't really have God in the picture at all. Maybe if I think about this idea when I'm worried (or even excited) I can think about whether my fear (or excitement) has roots in my identity being in the wrong place.

Here's the blog post: http://refineus.org/2011/10/will-you-feel-like-a-failure/