In the last several months, with the help of a trusted friend and mentor, I’ve been sifting through some big heart issues. When I showed up at TNL a couple weeks ago, I’d already spent a lot of the afternoon with God, repenting for some of those heart issues. So as Jared unfolded his talk from Consuming to Cultivating, I knew right away what I was consuming and what had been consuming me and it wasn’t a tangible material thing.

It is my people pleasing tendencies. But it is deeper than just people pleasing. It is my overvaluing of man’s praise and approval and undervaluing God’s. It is letting my worth be defined by anyone other than God.

I first sought a mentor to be led by because I desire to live a life of joy and freedom, but don’t always feel like I am actually living that life. In this journey of being led, my eyes have been opened to how I do believe God’s truths about my worth with my head, but I don’t truly believe them with my heart. If I did, I wouldn’t be so crushed when I don’t meet other people’s expectations or when someone is upset with me. This constant striving for approval and worth has been leading to a type of death. Death that kills my joy. Death that blinds me to who God made me to be and the worth I have simply by being His child.