Stealing hurts my feelings

LOL! Writing that title might have been the hardest thing I have ever done.  The world of Kleptomania starts at a young age.  I hear my kids yell, "Mom - Dad, Campbell took my marker without asking, Elle took my piece of paper and there is no more, Owen took the last Svenhard's cheese horn!"

Okay, I have actually never heard that last one.  Like Mirm said, the impulse to not trust God and take into our own hands what we think we need is in all of us.  Ultimately stealing screams, "God I don't trust that you are who you say you are. You no longer know what is best for me, so I must take action, I must seize what I think is best for me!"

When I am tempted to steal attention away from someone.....
When I am tempted to steal a conversation so people can know what I think about something....
When I am tempted to steal a reputation of someone by talking bad about them....
When I am tempted to steal an experience from someone by OVER SHARING my experience....
When I am tempted to steal "my life" away from God..........

.........stealing hurts my feelings! The end result is always damage done to my ability to feel God moving in my life and in a certain situation.   When I give into or live out of "stealing" I cease being an authentic person.  I deprive myself of grace and self-sabotage the abundant life freely offered in Christ Jesus for a self manufactured counterfeit.  I fail to recognize an opportunity to grow in character and maturity.  Rather I continue the facade of control by stealing relationship that comes in those opportune times to trust God and bank on His mercy and grace.

In an attempt to be an authentic person, I will postulate questions to justify my behavior.  So deep are my "potholes"/"deficits" that even the questions I ask do not come from an authentic me, rather the questions generate from the occupied role.... "A THIEF".  No longer is it I asking the questions, but the performance of the occupied role of THIEF.

"Roles" cannot have relationship with "Persons". Only "Persons" can have relationship with "Persons".  When I enter relationship as a role (A THIEF), I do 4 things:

1. Expose my own dividedness of my identity. 

2. Expose my desire to control people.

3. Expose an inner hierarchical view of myself.

4. I violate the person by dehumanizing them to a role (A VICTIM OF A THEFT).

Stealing hurts my ability to feel!

-Reid